The fun little mobile diversion title Break The Prison is essentially a collection of themed mini-games that keep you on your toes by changing up what you have to do in each section. While trying to break out of each section of prison, the story of your wrongful imprisonment unfolds through adorably broken English.
Some of the instructions are hilarious in their lack of understanding how the language works (“if it be filled before time over, win you will!”) so you may need some outside guidance in figuring out how to beat each level. Break The Prison follows the standard energy lockout formula that’s now commonplace on mobile games, so you’ll want to have a strategy in mind ahead of time if you don’t want to drop some money or wait through 10 minute lockout periods.
Planning Your Prison Break
The very first level has a core mechanic that’s repeated several times throughout the game: having to plan the next phase of your escape while the guards aren’t looking. This is really simple – you just tap and gently swipe side to side to read your map, saw your pipes, hammer your weapon, etc. The difficulty comes in gauging when someone is going to walk by.
Tap and continue holding down until you can actually see the guard leg enter the screen. You don’t have to stop when his shadow is visible, as you won’t get caught until most of the person’s body is actually beyond the cell bars.
Likewise, don’t wait for the guard to be fully off the screen to start up again, instead get back to your map making or pipe sawing once his face is off the screen but most of his body is still visible. This shaves off a few seconds and will mean the difference between a two and three star win.
Better put that map away before the guard notices…
Grabbing Keys From Clueless Guards
On these levels, the important thing to keep in mind is that you can’t actually hit the guard with your hook, so always wait for them to move at least halfway across the screen (in either direction, depending on whether they are walking left or right) so they are slightly past you when you cast out.
Since you are going for a moving target, throw the hook just past where the key is currently sitting now but not far enough forward that you’ll hit the guard. You’ll need a longer lead time the farther away the guard is, and if the guard has managed to get near the edge of the screen, don’t waste your time throwing the hook and just wait for the next one instead.
Grab the keys without hitting the guards
Running From The Law
These running segments where you can’t go outside the bounds of the track can be very difficult for one simple reason: if you are using your finger, you can’t see enough of the on-screen character to tell if his head or feet are poking off the track!
If you just can’t get 3 stars on these levels no matter how hard you try, switching to a skinny stylus will immediately change this and make these levels much easier. Don’t forget you can also go backwards in the running segments instead of forwards, which is helpful if the screen is moving too fast in a vertical segment.
These are insane without a stylus
Jumping Quests
The other type of side-scrolling running game is all about avoiding objects. There’s a very careful balancing act here – you need to jump just late enough to avoid the current object in front of you, but soon enough that you have time to immediately jump again if there’s a chain sequence of trash cans or boxes.
In general, always jump just a split second before you think you need to and you should clear the current obstacle and still have enough time to tap again for the next one.
Trash cans are apparently a bigger obstacle than barb wire fences!
Puzzle Board Tunnels
The first time you see these puzzle board segments reminiscent of that old PC game Pipe Dream, it seems like they will take forever to complete and be a serious challenge to finish in the allotted time. Looks are deceiving in this case, as not that much work actually went into programming this particular mini-game. It’s important to note that you don’t have to move the pieces in order like you would on a real puzzle.
You just have to quickly assess how the segments go together to make a line to the exit while going around any obstacles. You can then grab any piece on any section of the board and drag it to any other section of the board – even if there are pieces in the way.
Drop your selected piece wherever you like and the existing pieces will shuffle around to accommodate the new one. This makes it a breeze to construct a tunnel that goes around guards and hits the exit in 10 seconds or less.
This isn’t nearly as hard as it looks
Blank Puzzles
Certain levels will have you absolutely baffled when you first hit them, as there’s nothing on the screen that can be interacted with and no apparent means of escaping the room. Whenever this happens, be sure to shake your device and it will usually knock something over – like a candle or a bucket of water - that reveals what to do next. From there finishing the puzzle should be self-explanatory.
Follow our Break The Prison tips and you won’t be behind bars long!
That’s its for our basic Break The Prison strategies, but stay tuned for our guide on how to beat specific challenging levels coming soon!
