Escape from Hell, despite its dire sounding title, is actually a fairly light-hearted role-playing game that is saturated with tongue-in-cheek humor and some good sarcastically comedic moments. It is, however, categorized as a horror game because of its premise, and younger gamers should be duly cautioned. Escape from Hell was both published and developed by Electronic Arts, Incorporated, and was released in the very early nineties for play only on the personal computer running the MS-DOS operating system. It never seemed to blossom any further than that, despite its fun overall atmosphere.
The premise of Escape from Hell is not a really tricky idea. An average guy, with an average job and an average life is inexplicably warped into the bowels of Hell. The game does not really detail just what the man did to wind up in such dire straits, but there he is, nonetheless, and he is not a lost soul. He is very much alive, and the bulk of the game will see the user trying to help him to “escape from Hell” and return to his mundane life.
There are all sorts of twists and turns in Escape from Hell. To begin with, your guardian angel leaves his apologies and abandons
you to your fate. What you are doing with a guardian angel in Hell and why he is delayed is a mystery to be solved. You will have to talk to all manners of demonata and crazy monsters, lost souls and minions of Beelzebub himself. You will witness some rather morbid but inventive tortures, but will also glean a full explanation of why they are beneficial and what each victim may have done to deserve such treatment. Escape from Hell does not offer random gore for a cheap scare tactic.
The game plays from the very user-friendly top-down perspective, and true to many role-playing games of the era, offers many adventure gaming style puzzles to be solved. Many revolve around classic fetch quests and inventory building, as one would expect. The RPG element is simplistic, and the manner of building experience and raising statistics and attributes is easy and standard. There are tons of weapons and items to find/use, and the gaming environment is actually quite large, so the game will be more than a rainy day play, despite its simplicity.
Escape from Hell, ironically, is not a bad game at all. It is filled with parody and Biblical references which may offend some people, or may serve as more like a test of knowledge for others. It is well worth a look.
