To get a better understanding of the game and the objective of its creators, I tried all of the possible ways for escape.
- When the rocket launcher is fired, it shoots ammunition toward the officer but is backfired on a machine and kills Henry.
- The tele porter relocates Henry to the field outside of the prison, but other police men are target shooting and accidentally hit Henry.
- If Henry drinks the NrG juice he is able to run out of the prison, but he dies from a heart attack right after he exits the building.
- The drill can be used to drill through the floor, however Henry never stops drilling and ends up going to the center of the earth.
- If the cell phone is used, Henry calls his lawyer and is transported to a court room. At court, Henry can choose different items to help him prove his innocence. The only item, out of six options that include video surveillance and bank blueprints, that clears his name is a body bag. The defendant proves that if he had planned to rob the bank then he would not have been able to tie himself in the bag, therefore someone else had to have framed him. The judge realizes this must be true when the residing officer admits that he tied Henry in the bag. Henry is declared not guilty and gets to leave.
- The nail file can be used to cut a bar on the jail cell that can then be used to fight the guards in order to escape.
There are endless options for attempting escape in this game. Each of the six items can lead to various other endings for Henry. The ability to choose different paths makes the game a reflection of reality as we are able to make our own choices, and lots of them, everyday. Life constantly presents us with different paths, and our decisions directly affect our future, just as the gamers decisions do in Escaping the Prison.
The graphics of the game emphasize its image as a puzzle game. All of the items are like puzzle pieces and how the gamer uses them determines the outcome of the game. The characters are stick figures that do not display any type of racial or ethic relation, making any gamer able to adopt the main character as their own. The freedom the game allows for the player makes it interesting as Henry's life is literally in their hands.
This game is centered around Henry's goal of escaping jail. The items that are presented at the beginning reveal a lot about the creators of the game. Most of the items seem normal to want for a hypothetical escape from prison, such as a tele porter or a rocket launcher, but these objects can be classified as Tricksters according to Jung's dream archetypes. Celeste Adams describes Jung's idea of a Trickster to be "the model of deception, illusion, and cunning" (Adams). The Tricksters in this game are those objects that one would desire to help them escape, but they actually lead to greater grief and even death, or losing the game. A tele porter is an appealing tool for someone who wants to travel to a different place, so I instinctively clicked on this item first. However, this what would seem obvious solution ended up getting Henry killed. It is the epitome of a deceptive item within the game. This archetype is continuously used throughout Escaping the Prison.
As the gamer journeys into Henry's world, he learns that the people around him have different sides to them. The officer who charged Henry with the robbery is the prosecutor in the court trial, and when I clicked on the body bag, I found out the truth about him. The officer, not Henry, was actually the man who stole the money and robbed the bank. He beat up Henry and put him in the bag in order to frame him. These actions are not the type of things one would expect to come from a policeman, which makes him relate to Jung's description of the Shadow archetype. The Shadow is a part of us that "is filled with the uncivilized behaviors and emotions that are incompatible with our standards and our idea of who we are" (Adams). Though people, and even the policeman himself, never would have thought that a man of that position would do such horrible things, his dark side got control and forced him to do unthinkable things.
While playing this game, that is available to anyone with a computer and Internet access, it made me think about the idea of escaping from prison. The game presented the action extremely nonchalantly which made me wonder about our society's opinion of prison escape. According to Maria Durand, prison escapes are on the decline, which is great news. But, if game makers are willing to create a video game for kids about how to escape prison, is this not an issue? The concept as a whole should not be promoted at all, let alone made the objective and glorified in an online game. If video games are reflections of society and our actions playing them reflect our own personalities, then games centered around prison escape are very troubling.
Escaping the Prison is an entertaining game in that it is easy to play and not extremely difficult to win. A successful escape from prison is celebrated with Henry running enthusiastically along to the beat of an uplifting song. The game is fun to play during a short period of time and has multiple paths for victory. Escaping prison reflects Jung's ideas of the Shadow and Tricksters, which also helps in the development of the game as a negative reflection of society. Mark Dotson explains that Jung claimed dream analysis is the primary way to gain knowledge of the unconscious mind. The people who play this game are subconsciously being forced to think that escaping prison is acceptable when in fact it is a terrible thing to do. Their willingness to do so, which must be high in American society because I found this game on a popular gaming website, shows that people are willing to disregard their morals in a game. Who is to say that they would not disregard them in real life? Maybe not to the extent of escaping prison, but on a smaller scale, this game leads me to believe that people will do whatever they need to do to reach a goal or "win the game."
This game is centered around Henry's goal of escaping jail. The items that are presented at the beginning reveal a lot about the creators of the game. Most of the items seem normal to want for a hypothetical escape from prison, such as a tele porter or a rocket launcher, but these objects can be classified as Tricksters according to Jung's dream archetypes. Celeste Adams describes Jung's idea of a Trickster to be "the model of deception, illusion, and cunning" (Adams). The Tricksters in this game are those objects that one would desire to help them escape, but they actually lead to greater grief and even death, or losing the game. A tele porter is an appealing tool for someone who wants to travel to a different place, so I instinctively clicked on this item first. However, this what would seem obvious solution ended up getting Henry killed. It is the epitome of a deceptive item within the game. This archetype is continuously used throughout Escaping the Prison.
As the gamer journeys into Henry's world, he learns that the people around him have different sides to them. The officer who charged Henry with the robbery is the prosecutor in the court trial, and when I clicked on the body bag, I found out the truth about him. The officer, not Henry, was actually the man who stole the money and robbed the bank. He beat up Henry and put him in the bag in order to frame him. These actions are not the type of things one would expect to come from a policeman, which makes him relate to Jung's description of the Shadow archetype. The Shadow is a part of us that "is filled with the uncivilized behaviors and emotions that are incompatible with our standards and our idea of who we are" (Adams). Though people, and even the policeman himself, never would have thought that a man of that position would do such horrible things, his dark side got control and forced him to do unthinkable things.
While playing this game, that is available to anyone with a computer and Internet access, it made me think about the idea of escaping from prison. The game presented the action extremely nonchalantly which made me wonder about our society's opinion of prison escape. According to Maria Durand, prison escapes are on the decline, which is great news. But, if game makers are willing to create a video game for kids about how to escape prison, is this not an issue? The concept as a whole should not be promoted at all, let alone made the objective and glorified in an online game. If video games are reflections of society and our actions playing them reflect our own personalities, then games centered around prison escape are very troubling.
Escaping the Prison is an entertaining game in that it is easy to play and not extremely difficult to win. A successful escape from prison is celebrated with Henry running enthusiastically along to the beat of an uplifting song. The game is fun to play during a short period of time and has multiple paths for victory. Escaping prison reflects Jung's ideas of the Shadow and Tricksters, which also helps in the development of the game as a negative reflection of society. Mark Dotson explains that Jung claimed dream analysis is the primary way to gain knowledge of the unconscious mind. The people who play this game are subconsciously being forced to think that escaping prison is acceptable when in fact it is a terrible thing to do. Their willingness to do so, which must be high in American society because I found this game on a popular gaming website, shows that people are willing to disregard their morals in a game. Who is to say that they would not disregard them in real life? Maybe not to the extent of escaping prison, but on a smaller scale, this game leads me to believe that people will do whatever they need to do to reach a goal or "win the game."
http://www.addictinggames.com/puzzle-games/escaping-the-prison.jsp
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