Enigmaticon: Phone Escape: Hopeless | Review

Phone Escape: Hopeless Review | You wake up within a dark chamber, holding an unfamiliar mobile device. The sole source of illumination is the flashlight of that phone. A message from an unknown, hostile figure arrives, seemingly responsible for your confinement. You’re coerced into following this individual’s directives, tasked with solving challenging riddles using all the available tools and clues from the operating system of the provided phone along with the clues and puzzles of the 3D environment to uncover the truth and escape.

Date Played: May 2024
Time Spent: 59:31
Number of Players: 1
Platform Played: Android
Difficulty: Medium

I really enjoy “found phone” games. There’s just something so fun, and a little voyeuristic about playing through a mystery through the medium of a physical phone. The text messages, the photos, guessing passwords. It’s great. I love it…

…Enigmaticon takes that coolness but instead tackles the genre in a slightly different way. It’s a found phone, sure, but as a medium to play an escape room – not just to solve a mystery. Though don’t get me wrong, there is still a mystery at heart. But you won’t get it by hacking locked folders. Instead the experience was primarily centred around using the ‘camera’ to look around the game’s environment and move from puzzle to puzzle. Along the way you’ll chat to two mysterious characters who prompt you for answers to their cryptic questions.

Screenshot by Enigmaticon

Overall, I enjoyed this one. It’s a unique idea of a game and plays quite well as a short and sweet mobile phone game. It’s no surprise it’s enjoyable since one of this game’s creators is Dimitris Chassapakis, half of the team at Journal 29. Journal 29 is one of the most critically acclaimed puzzle books, and whilst I haven’t personally played it myself (hey! one day!), I know many of my co-writers here at The Escape Roomer have.

In terms of puzzles, there are many well thought out ones that lead to fun “a-ha” moments once you finally figure them out. There were moments of logic, as well as some more physical tactile puzzles that involved fun moments of looking around your environment. I loved wandering round the 3D space looking for clues, and even though I was only looking at a small mobile phone screen I felt drawn to the grimy, dusty and above all spooky atmosphere.

If I had one piece of constructive feedback about the puzzles, I thought that perhaps they might have made a little better use of the medium of a mobile phone. For example, the phone vibrates often but not in relation to a puzzle. But as a first game in the series, it was a solid step into the found phone genre, and I’m excited to see what the company will do next with the Phone Escape series.

Image (c) Enigmaticon

In terms of the art style, it was moody and shrouded in darkness, setting the scene well for the story. Half the time you’re wandering from spotlight to spotlight, used carefully to highlight the next puzzle in the environment. Other times you’re peering close up at 3D details from a puzzle trying to figure out what to do.

Unfortunately we do have to mark it down for it’s inclusion of AI art. Sorry, but as artists and game designers ourselves, we just don’t support games that use AI art here on The Escape Roomer. I’m always a little sad every time I play a brand new game only to realise that much of the art I’m looking at wasn’t made by human hands, after all “why should someone bother to play a game (or read a book, or view a painting) that someone else didn’t bother to make“. All that to say – I’m giving this game a free pass on it because it seems like the AI art is concentrated only in the portions of the games that show photographs of people and newspaper articles. I understand that some designers use AI in order to ensure they don’t accidentally use a real person’s likeness… And so I’ll give the developer’s of Phone Escape: Hopeless the benefit of doubt on this one. Still, I hope to see less AI art in future games :^)

Regardless, lets move on quickly.

The last thing to mention is the story. In Phone Escape: Hopeless, you wake up in a room with little memory of who you are or why you’re there. One thing is clear however, someone is tormenting you, and it has to do with something in your distant past… As you wander through the room and solve the puzzles, you unlock more interactions. The more interactions with your captors, the more of the story you slowly uncover. It is a mystery game, but most of the mystery will unfold gradually, allowing you to play without needing to make too many big leaps in narrative to get to the conclusion.

Phone Escape: Hopeless – The Verdict

At $1.99 to play, it’s probably one of the best value for money digital escape games currently on the market. I took 59:31 minutes to solve the game – although, I didn’t realise I was being timed, and might have been able to do it a little faster if I hadn’t paused to write so many notes along the way! But most players can expect to solve it in around 1 hour. For that time, it’s great value for money, and I’d recommend it to any fans of horror games or folks looking for more escape room games playable on their mobile phone.

For sure, it’s not a perfect game, but since this is the company’s first game, I think we can expect exciting things in the future.

We were not charged for our copy of the game, but this hasn’t influenced our review.

Phone Escape: Hopeless can be played on Android or iPhone. Check out more on their website here.