[Locust Appreciation Group] "Desperate Prison": Escape from the cage and find yourself

Platform: iOS/Android

Game Type: Inference Mystery

Production company: wasabi studio

Brief comment: Although it is still a familiar style of painting, familiar BGM, and even familiar gameplay, the new works of wasabi also bring us thoughts and touches.

As a loyal fan of wasabi studio, although I did not pass the "Desperate Prison" that was translated into Pujia this year as soon as possible, I still passed the game body within two days.

01

"Desperate Prison" still retains the characteristics of some old studio works in terms of main gameplay. Its puzzle solution is still to click on the map to switch between various scenes, and then to obtain clues by talking to the characters in the house and interacting with the items displayed, thereby promoting the plot development. In addition, while retaining the large framework of the previous trial system, the game has made some innovations in the content and form. Players can consume points to extract questions to ask the judge (that is, the suspect). Then they need to answer the "cloze-filling" in the picture below. All the answers are correct and the points consumed are limited, you can get the highest reward. Then you will enter the secret and "execution" stage. However, the death CG and animation of this game are not bloody at all, and it directly changes from the original *** to the full age, which is a bit regrettable.

As a free download stand-alone game, this game specially introduced physical strength and gold coin systems in order to increase krypton gold points. First of all, unlocking a new section requires a certain amount of physical strength. In addition to the 10 points of physical strength that are recovered regularly every day and the one-time reward for chapter opening, physical strength can only be obtained by krypton gold, but you can only get the "early level clearance special", namely fanbook, if you want to get it, you have to spend money, about 30 yuan. The second is gold coins. In "The Prison of Desperation", gold coins are a very critical material. They are mainly used to buy gifts to show the protagonists' favorability. Only after the favorability level is reached can the real ending be opened. The importance is self-evident. In addition to krypton gold, another way to obtain gold coins is to work in the store street. While working, you will likely drop a prop called a lottery ticket, which is the purpose of drawing clothes for the protagonists.

These functions are also an attempt by wasabi to innovate in text-based stand-alone games. Although the pricing is a bit expensive, everything except fanbooks can be saved slowly. I personally think this is a plus point, after all, it also extends the "lifetime" of the game in disguise.

02

If "Game of Lies" and "Game of Wolf" (and the extra) are dark and deep works that pay tribute to the projectile and carry out the heartache to the end, "The Hall of Captivity" has made breakthroughs in the setting and gameplay in addition to continuing the style of rejuvenation (increasing) and then "The Prisoner of Desperate" can be said to have completed a "subversion". Although it still has the familiar color-pitched and disc-style style and the exclusive bgm that repeats every three seconds, no one died in the main plot this time, and it really took a warm route. According to what the author said in his early fanbook, this is a game with the theme of "re-examining oneself", that is, reaching a "reconciliation" with oneself.

The whole game revolves around the "Despair Prison", a place that allows humans to face the other self, the so-called clone spirit. The clone spirits are born from the despair or troubles that the body has. They will disguise themselves as people and live among the crowd, and instead of themselves, engage in activities in society, and even kill their own body, thus making themselves a truly independent "personality". The male protagonist Nobuyuki woke up from such a nightmare of "the clone spirit killing the body", and found himself lying at the door of a strange room called Despair prison, so he asked the soul three times, "Who am I", "Where am I", and "What am I doing".

After negotiating with the prison administrator, Shinseki decided to accept the task and go to Class B, 2nd Year of Strange Heart Academy to eliminate the "Clone Spirit" in exchange for his own memory.

I looked back later and found that there was a huge foreshadowing buried here at the beginning...

The game has a total of six chapters, telling the story of the six students in the academy reconciliation with themselves. It was not until the last chapter that Shin-seok showed his face, which is also considered a traditional art of wasabi.

Rather than saying that the protagonist of "The Desperate Prison" is Shinseki, it is better to say that this is a "group portrait drama". Basically, after getting rid of the clone spirit and defeating himself, the "murderer" in each case will join the "Mystery Research Department" where Shinseki is located, become partners with him, and participate in the investigation of the next case. Friendship replaces "revenge" and becomes the main theme of this work, which is a situation that will not happen in the previous work. From this change, it is not difficult to find that wasabi seems to want to make this game into a game with the nature of "fan work", which can explain why a stand-alone puzzle game has set a favorability and dress-up system.

In addition, the dilemma and cases faced by the six protagonists did not use the "castle in the air" style design, that is, they did not "force" design tricks for reasoning. They come from life and are superior to life, which alludes to some real problems in reality, such as gender cognitive impairment, campus bullying, poor communication with parents, being blamed by friends, etc. In a sense, one or more of these stories can resonate or think about the players.

We know that among the factions of mystery novels, there is a category called the social faction, whose representative works are "Points and Lines", "Sandware" and "Focus of Zero". Unlike the (new) native school that attaches importance to reasoning logic and tricks, and the mutant school that uses exaggerated techniques to exaggerate the treacherous atmosphere, the main content of the social school is to describe the good and evil of human nature and reveal social problems. Most cases have certain practical significance and can attract thought. As for the reasoning game that is "homogeneous" as a mystery novel, I think it can also be roughly divided by these categories. For example, the domestic game "Romain Christmas Detective Collection" which was discounted during AVG promotion some time ago uses the classic model of Blizzard Villa, and the overall style is more natural; while the previous work of wasasabi and the "Bulan Lunpo" it pays tribute to. It can be regarded as the representative of the new style.

If you eat furry style, you can try "Romain Christmas Detective Collection", and the evaluation is OK.

As for "Desperate Prison", in my personal opinion, it is a game created by wasabi based on the new style and combined with socialist techniques. Therefore, compared with the previous work, it pays more attention to the content and theme of the narrative, and reduces the difficulty of the puzzle to a certain extent. For example, you can guess correctly by filling in the blanks and quizzing in the trial (this is a small flaw, it is too unchallenging). However, it may be because of insufficient experience and insufficient writing skills of the copywriting. The depth of portraying these social issues is a bit superficial. Therefore, some players said that they were not willing to buy into this change, besabi this time abandoning their advantages and strengths, and regretfully found that after stripping away the gorgeous and curious shell, its inner depth is still not rich and profound enough.

03

In general, "Desperate Prison" is an ostensibly free game, with a good quality; and if you want to think about it during the game, it is even more worth playing. And these thoughts may be the charm of the mystery game - allowing players to gain deeper additional benefits in addition to "brain burning".

Finally, if you like the style of "Desperate Prison", don't miss other works from wasabi Studio, especially "Wolf Game"! Let me show you the previous work I wrote before, amway, wasabi puzzle game (1) and wasabi puzzle game (2). If you like it, don’t miss it~