For anyone who’s spent much of the pandemic working from home, the urge to escape the room—or the couch—that’s become a makeshift office is all too relatable. Enter a series of “escape rooms” built in Google Docs that offer a playful escape, ironically through the very web software we’ve likely grown a bit too familiar with. On Tuesday, “Part 3” of the game was finally released, but even in your escape, Google Docs remains your constant companion.
Escape: A Game by Anthony Smith is a choose-your-own-adventure experience crafted within a series of interconnected Google Docs. You “wake up” from a mysterious dream in a smoke-filled cabin and must find a way out. In Part 2, you face similar challenges in a hotel corridor, and with Part 3 now out, I won’t spoil what happens next. While there are other games designed in Google’s software, Escape has a unique, eerie charm that’s hard to resist.
However, as intriguing as this format is, Google Docs isn’t the smoothest platform for gaming. Clicking on links often requires multiple attempts to navigate between documents, and the tabs quickly pile up. At one point, my laptop started to struggle under the weight of open tabs as I cross-referenced clues and dialed in-game phone numbers.
That said, there are benefits to using a collaborative word processor for puzzle-solving. Both Part 1 and Part 2 feature pages that double as guestbooks, where players can leave their names and offer puzzle hints to others. While you need to request editing access for Part 1, it’s still helpful for sharing tips, even without live updates.
The narrative in Escape is sparse in the beginning, leaving plenty of space for you to make your own imaginative connections. While playing, I couldn’t help but notice similarities between Escape‘s smoke-filled cabin and the “Oceanview Motel” from Control. Both feature escape-room-style puzzles and act as surreal, liminal spaces. Though Escape lacks Control‘s striking visuals, it taps into a similar sense of eerie weirdness.
I spent about an hour on the first part of Escape, ending with over 50 tabs open and a bizarre YouTube history. I picked up random facts about dentistry, grew frustrated for not remembering all 151 original Pokémon, and at one point questioned whether this was all just a clever trick to teach me how links work in Docs. Overall, it was a quirky and fun way to spend time online.
Escape: A Game is free to play on Google Docs. Parts 1, 2, and 3 are available now for your puzzle-solving enjoyment.
