Looking for games that include the protagonist trying to blend in and evade recapture after a prison break, but all I’m finding are games that focus on the prison break itself. Is anyone familiar with any IF that portrays this, or even better, lets you experience it first hand?
Alternatively, willing to see games from the perspective of trying to recapture escaped convicts.
Thanks in advance!
In Spanish you have “Colditz” a WWII game (with graphics and music, playable with web browser) about scaping from that German prision castle.
It is about going out the prision, and the man hunt after it. Don’t know if this could match in what are you looking for 
Yeah, the usual place for a game to stop is outside the prison or prison camp… There are a few that don’t; mainly WWII-themed ones… I don’t know if you’d class those as “prison”.
I think Frank Fridd’s Colditz Escape (originally for the Amstrad CPC in 1986) involved some escapes outside the camp as part of the adventure. As did John Betteridge’s Escape From Khoshima, again for the CPC from the same year.
The two games David R. Moffatt’s Quilled C64 Escape and Evasion series involved… well, firstly escape and then evasion.
This is a good find! Thank you for sharing it!
Yeah, I was imagining a game that opens immediately after the successful escape, shouting guards and dogs barking in the woods behind as the protagonist crouches behind a tree catching their breath, heart in their throat. Or alternatively, an improvised raft scraping onto the opposite shore as a shrill alarm swells from the island fortress jail behind them, the beams of searchlights and smaller flashlights swirling around like an upset hornets nest.
Thank for the suggestions, I’ve added John Betteridge’s Escape From Khoshima and David R. Moffatt’s Quilled C64 Escape and Evasion series to my list!
The commercial choice of games game Werewolves 2: Pack Mentality does this twice, first with you escaping from a detention cam then infiltrating and escaping from a high security prison and then evading recapture. It’s also one of the more popular CoG games.
Thank you, Brian. That is indeed what I am looking for and it is added to the list.
Given your breadth of familiarity with IF titles combined with the fact that you had only one (very solid) suggestion, would it be fair to assume that this scenario is not as commonly explored in IF as some others?
To be clear, I’m just as interested in poorly implemented and/or executed examples as long as they fit the premise. I can learn just as much if not more from a critical failure as I can from a critical success.
I would agree that this is fairly uncommon. Not many games immediately spring to mind, so it would be a rare scenario.
After racking my brain for a while, I remember that Kaged has a prison escape halfway through the game with some evasion after:
(As a side note, weird hat that game won IFComp but was only nominated for a single xyzzy award).
I have vague memories of a few older sci fi parser games (or maybe 1) where you are thrown in the brig and escape early on. I’ll try to find them, but that’s all I got! (Can’t guarantee I’m not missing some huge and obvious game though).
Edit: Okay, found the space brig game: Piracy 2.0:
Thank you! Both added.
I haven’t seen any suggestions where the protagonist is trying recapture (an) escaped convict(s); i.e. you’re playing the Warden with your bloodhound Red sort of thing. It seems this would be even rarer.
I’m contemplating a multi-player turn-based game where each turn is a small segment played by either the fugitive or the pursuer. Choices made by one player impacts circumstances presented to the other player in subsequent turns. Seeing how others approached this is really helpful.
I suspect that the vast majority of IF authors are closet anarchists, so I doubt we’ll find many recapture-the-escaped-prisoner games. Your idea sounds unique!
Edit: (I may be joking a little about the anarchy, for people who have difficulty reading social humor)
I can think of a few medieval style:
Run, Bronwynn, Run! (1992 / 2017 for ZX Spectrum / ADRIFT)
This is the game I can think of which comes closest to “trying to blend in and evade recapture after a prison break” as this game is one big “blend in and evade until you escape the country”. However, the protagonist is not escaping a real prison but from her father’s castle as you don’t want to marry a man your father decided that you should marry. I only played the ADRIFT version and escaping the castle is a bit cumbersome because your disguises have to be perfect but after that the game is really good if you like old school games. I don’t remember any magic in this one, despite being set in the same universe as the usual Alaric Blackmoon games by the same author.
Info, walkthrough etc. here: Run, Bronwynn, run! on CASA
In part IV of “The Axe of Kolt” by the same author, you also have to escape a prison and evade guards but the enemies are non-human: Axe of Kolt on CASA
Thank you for two more!
Honestly, I need to spend more time perusing CASA. There’s quite a bit of IF there that never made it to IFDB.
I’m sure I’ve played games where you have to avoid your pursuers or avoid being recaptured, but the only one that springs to mind is ‘Kobold in Search for Family’. This is a small Adventuron game where you are bounced out of a cart in the prologue and you have to disguise yourself and avoid capture by the humans.
I can’t recall playing one where you have to recapture escaped convicts.
You might like to search the Escape genre on CASA or use the Escape tag on IFDB. Most of these will be pure escape games, but some may go beyond that.
Thank you, Garry! Added to the list, much appreciated!
At this point, for various reasons, I would be surprised if I ultimately find any more than one or two “capture the fugitives” games. It has some connotation issues as a standalone game that sort of go away with an adversarial multiplayer warden vs escapee concept. Someone has to pick black when playing chess, after all.
The only “fugitive” (that is, blending and evading recapture or like) IF I can cite on the spot now is the very ancient Escape from rungistan for apple ][, circa 1983.
Concur with Pinkunz: the “capture the convict” is an interesting plot, allowing rather interesting, if not unique, villains & their motives. a villain bent on revenge, for example, give the player two major NPC to track: the villain and the target of the villain’s revenge.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
These two games are also on IFDB but I was thinking that you would like to see the map or walkthrough too and these are more often on CASA.
I think when you said “prison” my mind immediately just locked in on modern/historical games.
In actual fact I guess thinking about it there are lots (and lots) of text adventures that start with the player in a prison cell, with the first few months involving you escaping, that then open up into a full adventure scenario… I guess the real thing you’re looking for is, in the rest of the adventure, is there still a risk of capture or is that initial set-up forgotten and no longer a consideration for the player.
Thank you. Me being bad at communication again.
“I need to spend more time browsing CASA.” and “There’s IF there not on IFDB.” are two independent, if tangential, thoughts. It made it look like I was implying that these two games were not on IFDB, which it wasn’t that, because I hadn’t checked to know. Again, grade of D on communication for Pinkunz there. Thanks for the consideration.
Bingo. You said it better than I could. In the interests of what I’m trying to do, this is precisely what I’m looking for. I may add to the opening post of this topic to make that more clear now that you’ve pointed that out.
Thank you.
A very obscure game is ‘Breakout’ by Peter Wilkins. It’s a small Z-code game with only five rooms. Once you escape from your cell, there are a few solutions, one of which requires you to evade the guards and dogs in a somewhat novel (and disgusting) way.
“Strider” indirectly raise an interesting point. a prison can even larger than a building, namely an island (Italy still use some islands (NOT Montecristo…) as maximum security prison, where we get rid of top mafioso bosses) so, one can build a two-layer escape story, evading from the prison building itself first, then from the island (and here the "blend/hide and avoid recapture plot fits nicely)
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
