Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 11:01 am
The Escapists: Prison Escape – Entertainment Game Review
The Escapists: Prison Escape is a Entertainment/Strategy game from Team17 Digital Limited, first launched in 2nd March 2017.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 3,303+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes The Escapists: Prison Escape Stand Out
The Escapists, you’ve done the crime but can you survive and do the time? The Escapists is a unique prison escape sandbox game where you get to experience a life behind bars and barbed wire fences. You’ve had a life of crime but now you’re caught. With thrilling and immersive gameplay, you need to create an escape route in a world of other prisoners and ruled by routine.
From roll call to lights out, you’re banged up. There’s no get out of jail free card in this game, you need to break out. Are you up for the challenge or are just going to sit there in your cell? You need all your wits and skill to bust out. No walls are going to hold you, you need to escape!
While under the careful watch of the guards, you’ll need to get used to prison life while you use strategy and daring to swipe useful objects from under their noses. Make innocent looking items into useful tools like shovels for cunning escape plans or handy weapons to survive in a fight.
Escaping requires cunning, strategy, the right equipment and staying at least two steps ahead of the guards. Bribe and fight your way through the prison ranks. If your fellow prisoners like you enough, recruit them and create your own gang. You might even take over a prison! The guards are out to stop any escape attempts, so you’ll have to avoid suspicious behaviour by attending roll calls, working a prison job and hiding your stolen contraband.
Features:
● Addictive prison simulator game, steal spoons and forks, use them to dig a tunnel out of your cell.
● Over 6 themed prisons, try to escape from minimum security jails or fearsome big houses like Alcatraz
● Find, steal and trade items to create dozens of crafting combinations to aid your escape
● Use the exercise yard to increase your strength, handy for scaling walls
● Find other prisoners to trade swag with, you’ll need duct tape, a screwdriver or nail files
● Dodge contraband detectors. if you pass through one with contraband in your pocket, the heat meter rises to 99 percent
● Adapt to life behind the steel doors with prison routines and jobs and master the game's six penitentiaries, there are three extra prisons waiting to be challenged.
● Push yourself to survive and increase your strength, speed, and intellect. There are multiple ways to break out and escape, you just need to find them.
The Escapists is a thrilling sandbox strategy prison simulator that challenges you to bust out in a number of different ways. You want to break free but you're banged up and you need to escape! How you survive and do that is up to you, but when you’re out of your cell, a rigid daily schedule is designed to keep you in line. You're expected to work at one of several jobs during the day, exercise and showers are mandatory.
The Escapists is tough game, just like jail.
Can you dig a tunnel right under the walls of the prison? Or even steal a guard uniform to blend in with your captors? Addictive and tense, it’s a real challenge to escape your first prison. Commit a few inside crimes, there are dozens of items to find, steal and smuggle. Some are contraband you can sell or trade for more useful gear. Create clever makeshift weapons and tools, a bar of soap in a sock is useful in a fistfight.
Materials purchased or "borrowed" from your fellow inmates are used to craft tools and other items like wires, a bottle of bleach, a piece of timber, a bar of chocolate, a plastic comb, and much more. If you’re smart enough, you’ll figure out ways to make your escape. There are dozens of items to find and use to get out of your cell, including a pickaxe, wire cutters, zip lines and more.
The Escapists is an addictive strategy prison simulator game that challenges you to break out of jail. Don’t be a prisoner, be an Escapist!
Download The Escapists today, it would be a crime not to. You can’t check out and you can never leave, unless you have an escape plan…
This Entertainment game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, The Escapists: Prison Escape is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 13th March 2020
Recent improvements include:
Fixed an issue where the game would crash during loading and completing a level
Minor bug fixes and optimizations
Download & Availability
The Escapists: Prison Escape is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get The Escapists: Prison Escape on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
So one time we escaped every prison and moved on to extra prisons last time we managed to escape santas sweatshop! The grapics are like a 5 star hotel!!! This is the best game everrrrr.
We LOVE this game we have 1 and 2 but even though reviews are from long ago please never give up on this game we will cry if it wont work with our iOS anymore.
We like this game it is the best but its hard to get to H.M.P iron gate by escaping San Pancho.
We love playing this game, but the only issue we have is that the frame rate is capped at 30fps. If the devs can update the game and remove the frame rate cap it would be great. The android version does not have this limitation.
We love it. But we don't know how to craft more staff.
How did you make it? We love it like its so fun like we wanna make our own game like this we just love your games and.
Love this game wonder hard though dont get if you dont like to work for things.
We are writing this review after beating most prisons and the game is amazing its very challenging but it shows you that you have to be careful we love this game worth the money.
This game is a amazing game to play with.
Hello developers and players! Great game! But a couple of recommendations. Please add female characters. Some people want to make the choice of making their own female or male character and not choosing from the selected few. Also we would like to get the choice to be a cop or prisoner and to be able to play with friends (if you did not add it yet) Btw please make a control to make it easy, hard, or impossible as difficulty levels and that those controls change the guard flashlight size, others speed, aim of the beams when escaping , and finally the strength of everyone else. If you see this thank you for listening (reading) this and for the developers we hope you add these! Peace.
This game is amazing. Keep up the good work.
We like the escapists. We also got the escapists two. When we were playing the escapists 2, we realized that the escapists could have a lot more variety whilst customizing your look.
All you need to do is find a rake.
Men arent the only ones getting sent to prison.
Absolutely love this game. But theres just one problem. For whatever reason most of the extra stages have a problem with the free time music and they all play Santas sweatshop. We really like this games soundtrack, please fix it. Other than that its amazing, we recommend this to anyone who doesnt typically like mobile games.
Ive played this game for like three years now and this is a really nice game. And we think anybody who likes prison games orPeople who like to start riots or something or will like this game our cousin has heard about this game for years like us but he also likes this game weve been playing in real life to ever since we moved to a different house and his game is really nice.And we just really love this gameI love how you need to sneak stuff past metal detectors in some of thees maps. We also love how you have to eat or go in the showers doing gain energy to do stuff and we love this game so much.
This game is great but the area where the guards get suspicious of you is not to the edge of the rooms. Can you please fix this.
So this the best game that we have played to escape jail.
This is the funnest game ever but we want a police mode.
Let us start by saying this game is great! We were hesitant to buy this game at 4 dollars but its perfect being only 1 now. Its filled with lots of prisons with tons of action. The only thing that bothers us is when your standing in role call. And the guards tell you to get moving even though Im standing in line. This is our only complaint, otherwise this game is amazing.
We have played this game none stop and would recommend to anyone into fun prison escape games. Its one of a kind.
On the third map at the tip Machine Ther one tip you can not buy one of the coins we try to reset and it did none thing it said 80 coins but we had 175.
So we came back to a game that we got frustrated with, and quit. The reason was that we were a noob, and unless you look stuff up on the internet, it gets frustrating, but the complexity of the items needed to escape (once you look at videos or understand tips and tricks) is really creative. The pay phone tip thing does not really help, because people new to a map or tactic (like us) get confused by how to escape, and end up looking it up. Now, while we could go on and on about better hinting on ways to escape, our main problem lies within the lag time that causes major problems. First, sometimes we are not in the right spot, but then when roll call comes, for example, if we arrive just a little late, the guards are really unforgiving. Now, we know thats the point, but if you mess up, and there is 1 guard, then the guard heat or whatever goes up by a little, but if you do the same thing with 4 or 5 guards, then you got yourself up to 99 guard heat REAL quick. So, if the guard is in the same area as another, shouldnt the guard heat go up by the same amount? Also, digging is our favorite way to escape, but sometimes it gets frustrating when once you move a desk where the hole lies, can you move it back in place after you are already underground, and this makes us dig with ease, rather than returning to the surface every 30 seconds just to check if there is a guard near. Now here is where we rant. So the lag time makes it so when we reload a save, we just instantly have the same guard heat as when we died. We also wish that while there are saves, we wish you could go to the history, so that maybe you could retry the day, rather than the one time you were in an awkward spot, which solves the problem of being sent to solitaire no matter what, which is really frustrating, but then you have to reload the save, or restart the whole map, if you get yourself into a sticky situation. We wish there were more places to hide stuff, without just leaving your contraband underground. And while getting searched once in a while is necessary to keep the player on their toes, in certain places there are not enough cell mates, so you get picked for a search every day, which makes us worry about getting searched rather than the goal to escape. Also, if a game developer reads this, the reason why people are so critical of this game, is because it has INCREDIBLE potential. Like incredible. And the game is one of the best on the App Store, and just keep working at it, as this game is a diamond in the ruff. Other games try to mass produce cheap and easy games, and the complexity and thinking required makes this community so big, and which is why we keep coming back to find a different way to escape, and litterly stopped using console games to play this. Thank you so much for reading, and really take care of this app and the escapists 2. We love it.
Your app is cool we like playing it.
God, this game Is amazing! Worth double or even triple what they are selling it for! We love it. Im on the second prison and we found something and we dont know if its a bug or a planned feature but Im trying to dig a hole out of prison and we cover it with our desk but we found an issue where whenever Im near the desk it says Im at risk of discovery and to cover up our hole even though the desk is covering it, worst part? The guards do see it if Im next to the desk and we get sent to solitary and have to reload our save, we just want to know if this is a bug or a feature, other then that we think this game is awesome and it is worth every digital penny. 11/10.
We love this game but it would be fun if you add a multiplayer.
We love this game but Im just suggesting to fix a glitch we found in iron gate level if u go in the vents we can go through the wall of a section of a vent and then Im basically just floating midair and whenever we go to the escape part outside the gate our game crashes plz fix it other than that amazing game buy it.
Bro this game is awesome but we have an idea. So you know how some prisoners say Im lookin out for you well what if cops get more health and if they are looking out for you they will help in fights against cops and maybe other prisoners if that arent friends. We know that they probably wont read this but it would be cool if they did.
We love the concept and game it is really hard and we like that we just beat the game today now we are going to play The Escapists 2.
We really like the game, but one time we had a hole under our desk at the foot of our bed, and when we got out of bed we teleported under the hole and couldnt get out because the desk was on top of it.
We love it like the title says! Im pretty bad at the game, but we still think its fun! We also cant wait for survivalists to come out! (we saw a youtuber play it).
Its a great game fun and addictive but please add creative mode.
We love this game sooo much, its very entertaining and its (in a way) realistic. You can craft a ton of cool items and you have to use your brain to get out. It doesnt tell you how, what makes it fun is that you have to actually think of an escape plan. 150% worth the money. DOWNLOAD NOW.
This is a very fun game except we have one problem the problem is whenever somebody attacks you you automatically punch back that would be fine except then the guards start chasing you just because somebody attacked you which can be very annoying.
We beat the game HMP Irangate was easier than jungle compound San pancho was hardest but the DLC prisons make you weaker and its annoying.
We love the game and played it for at least two years, one day offloaded it, downloaded it back and this is what happened: we opened it and sat there for so many minutes and then it exited us out. It was still open, then we clicked on the open tab and waited for what seemed like years, but it did not work. We tried offloading it and re downloading it and it still did not work. And we tried restarting our iphone and it still did not work. Im on mobile Does that do anything with it? If you can fix it please do. We hate wasting money.
Ok so we love the game and we have beaten all of the regular prisons, but there is one strange glitch that we encountered whilst playing Santas Sweatshop. We had switched to touch control, later left the game, and when we came back and tried to switch back, the game crashed. We tried switching prisons but it didnt work. Is there a way that this can be fixed? Otherwise a really great game.
We really like this game it is super fun and the jails are all fun with interesting things you can do! Its a great game.
There is a glitch in hmp irongate where when you raise you intelligence and when you get tired you keep pressing A outside of the library until you get to the showers you keep pressing A on the right side of the shower block.after you raise 1 intel it stops working we hope you can raise you intellect when ever you want.
This is a great game, but we have one complaint. The guards (for us at least) sometimes tell us to hurry to where Im supposed to be when Im already there, unnecessarily bringing up our heat. Its a small inconvenience, but still annoying. Otherwise amazing and challenging.
When we were eating sitting down the guards told us to get there even though we were already there then our enemy came up punched us and they still killed us anyway fix this and it will be 5 Stars.
So our cousin installed it and now it just wont reinstall.
It is a great game but it crashes so randomly all the time out of nowhere, please fix this.
Ive been playing this game on our console for a while, and we enjoyed it very much. We installed it on our iPhone, and once we got to prison #2, some issues began to happen. First, we were at the end of day 1, and our game randomly crashed. It reset at our most recent save (which was roll call) it wasnt a huge deal, but we had spent the entire day getting intelligence 80 so we had to redo that. Second, we had knocked out 2 guards, which began a lockdow, where we lost everything (im not sure if this is intentional, but even if it wasnt, Im not including this in our review rating) Third, we had knocked out a guard, made key moulds, then returned the key. We had the little pop up notifying us that the game couldnt save if we were in danger of being caught, with an image of the knocked out guard. We double checked the guard still had his original key in his inventory (which he did). When he woke up, we were sent to solitary and lost everything for a third time. We love this game, and this has never happened before, which is why Im giving a 4/5. If these bugs never occurred, we would rate this game a 6/5.
It is a very good game but there is not as much prisons as we thought there is only a couple of them the second game has lots more prisons. The game is about 5 years old now so we get why they wouldnt update it but when they made it first it was more fun we wish there where more prisons. Its because we beat the prisons and it is not as fun beating them over and over again so we wish that one day we got a new prison.
Dont get us wrong this really is the Award winning prison escape game we see nothing wrong with it but can you add a multiplayer where you and your friends can escape together we would really like this feature. Also when you complete a prison you get coins depending on how good you did and you can spend coins to buy stuff that is actually useful and like you could organize the stuff you purchased to be in the desk at the beginning of the game before you actually start. Again this really is the award winning prison game but could you add these features it would be so cool thx 4 reading this hope you can add these new features.
We bought this game on our second account to play because of nostalgia but it crashes a lot. When we switch controls, it crashes. When we enter the game, it crashes.
This is a good game and Im not saying that it isnt but we got this for our son and we had to delete it for him because he pointed out to us that when your in the shower sometimes the prisoners will say things like: unless we get a little crazy or these arent the escape tools your looking for But other than that its a good game.
We love this game but for a while we've been unable to play it it opens loads then crashes we're on a iPod touch so probably just getting outdated.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.12
- Size: 469.00 MB
- iOS: 9.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Team17 Digital Limited
Last updated: 13th March 2020 | Genre: Entertainment, Strategy | Developer: Team17 Digital Limited