Harrison at front and center, the other contestants to the sides, and the show's producers in the background
Inescapable: No Rules, No Rescue is a Visual Novel developed by Dreamloop Games and published by Aksys Games, which was released on October 19, 2023.You play as Harrison, a Ridiculously Average Guy who was kidnapped along with 10 other strangers to compete in a twisted Reality Show set on an island with no rules. At the end of their stay, each guest will receive a whopping $500,000 - if they survive, that is.
This work provides examples of:
- Alice Allusion: Harrison's weird drug-induced tea party dream is overtly modeled after the infamous mad tea party with the characters even referring to the place as Wonderland several times.
- Asshole Victim: Everyone who dies in the Suspicion route is arguably this. Val was an arrogant rich brat whom other routes show to be completely ruthless when it comes to keeping on top, Gio was a mob boss and a very vocal misogynist and transphobe. Lumi, Isak and Eva are unrepentant killers who committed murder not out of some sense of justice but merely because they could in Isak's and Lumi's case and in sheer rage even though her opponent was already down in Eva's. The only one who subverts this is Mia, which Harrison angrily points out to the culprits at the end of the route.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Naima and Naomi act as both producers and hosts of Inescapable and constantly try to manipulate the contestants to commit reprehensible acts to make the show more interesting.
- Big Brother Is Watching: There are cameras everywhere on the island, streaming the group's every action to hundreds of viewers world-wide.
- Black Blood: Blood is censored to be pink.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall:
- Naomi does this frequently, to the point that in one cutscene she complains that Isak is making her break the fourth wall because she's so angry. Naima merely replies that she already told Naomi they weren't going to break any walls.
- During one road, Isak discovers through a tarot reading that him and the others are characters in a visual novel and becomes depressed over not being the main character.
- Cast of Snowflakes: Invoked trope. The DeWinter sisters intentionally opted for a multi-national diverse cast for their show, as they hoped this would get the most viewers.
- Closed Circle: There is no way off the island before the six months are up, communication with the outside world is cut off aside from the cameras streaming everything to the dark web where no one is likely to help the contestants.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: The deciding clue in Gio's murder are two letters Gio managed to write in his blood before succumbing to his injuries. Harrison can't decipher them at first due to one of the letters being smudged. During the trial Harrison and Mia figure out that the letters were an I and an L - meaning Isak and Lumi. Lumi realized this far earlier, which is why she intentionally made the second letter unreadable while pretending to check on Gio's body.
- Dark Secret: In the Trust route Naomi and Naima threaten to expose the contestants' deepest darkest secrets to the world if there isn't a second murder soon. The characters decide to instead Take a Third Option and simply reveal their secrets to each other voluntarily, robbing the sisters of their leverage.
- Deadly Game:
- On the Suspicion route of the story, some of the contestants end up trying to kill each other, which is encouraged by the show that kidnapped them. Harrison is made the "Island Sleuth" whose role is to solve the committed murders.
- The Trust route has the DeWinter sisters decide they want to take Inescapable in this direction, offering various motives and at one point even utilizing Blackmail to get the contestants to kill each other.
- Didn't See That Coming: This happens to the DeWinter sisters repeatedly in the Trust route as all their efforts to pressure and bully the contestants into killing each other either amount to nothing or are curb-stomped by Harrison holding the group together so well that their loyalty to him and by extension each other wins out over their paranoia and fear.
- Dwindling Party: In the Suspcion route. At the start there are eleven constestants on the island. Val's and Gio's murders whittle it down to nine. Isak, Eva, Lumi and Mia get bumped off during the route's finale leaving the final number of conestants at five.
- Dying Clue: Overlapping with Couldn't Find a Pen. In the Suspicion route Gio uses his last strength to leave a clue to his killer's identity in his own blood. Lumi unsuccessfully tries to meddle with the clue to throw suspcion off her and Isak.
- The End... Or Is It?: The ending of the Trust route has a short cutscene with the DeWinter sisters lamenting how poorly everything turned out for them and how their show ultimately flopped. Then Isak appears, revealing he never left the island and proposing to the sisters an idea for a sequel - heavily implying that he's going to act as the host this time.
- Gilded Cage: The island is pretty much a paradise, with luxurious quarters, running water, fresh food and several activities the contestants can engage in to their heart's content. The only problem is that the contestants can't leave and are expected to put on some kind of depraved show the nature of which hasn't even been decided by the producers yet.
- Hand Wave: Several characters point out to the DeWinter sisters that a kidnapping of this scale will not go unnoticed, especially when the heiress of a famous company and a mob boss are among the victims. And since the contestants are scheduled to be let go after half a year, nothing's stopping them from running to the police or other less savory associates the second they're in the clear. The sisters merely dismiss these points without explaining how exactly they plan to protect themselves from the inevitable retribution from both sides of the law.
- Hope Spot: In the Trust route the contestants manage to spend the majority of their time on the island without getting into any murderous shenanigans or otherwise antagonize each other and it looks like everyone will get to leave the island none the worse for wear and with a big cash prize in their pocket to boot. That is, until the DeWinter sisters chime in and inform the contestants that they hereby renege their promise to let them go because everyone's simply been too boring and they need something to happen if they want to keep Inescapable alive.
- I Have Your Wife: In the Trust route the DeWinter sisters eventually force Francesca into being The Mole for them by holding her infant daughter hostage.
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Harrison crosses the Despair Event Horizon after Mia's death in the Suspicion route, as he thinks he could've done something to save her. It gets even worse once it's revealed that her death was an accident and that he was the killer's actual target.
- Infinite Supplies: The DeWinters regularly ship fresh food and water to the island so the contestants don't starve or dehydrate and can be in top form to do whatever hopefully gruesome things they want to do. This gets intentionally subverted in the Trust route, where the sisters' first incentive for the contestants to commit murder is to stop all food deliveries.
- Kill the Cutie: The Suspicion route culminates in the tragic death of Mia, one of the most genuinely kind contestants on the island.
- Law Procedural: Very downplayed in the Suspicion route. After each death there's a makeshift trial where Harrison and Mia speculate on what might have happened using the evidence available to them. After the culprit is determined, nothing much really happens to them aside from being confined to their room for the remainder of everyone's time on the island.
- Medium Blending: In the Suspicion route, the closing argument of every "trial" is presented in a comic book format.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The Official Trailer
mainly showcases dialogue and images from the Suspicion route, while also noting in its description how the soundtrack incudes music from Zero Escape's Shinji Hosoe and Matias Lehtoranta, making Inescapable seem like a Social Deduction Game when the other three routes actually have different plots. - One-Steve Limit: None of the contestants share names. Might be an invoked trope since the DeWinter sisters would want their cast to be as diverse and memorable as possible.
- Relationship Values: The game keeps track of Harrison's friendship values with every other contestant. This partially determines which route the game will take after the first fifty days.
- Sadistic Choice: The DeWinter sisters do this several times to make the show more interesting with the most notable examples being in the Trust route. First they cut off all supplies to the island, forcing the contestants to choose between slowly starving to death or committing a murder. After Sasha's death they start delivering food and water again but when no one is willing to commit another muder they threaten to expose the remaining contestants' darkest secrets to the entire world. Later on they pull this on one of the contestants on a smaller scale: either Francesca acts as their mole within the group or she'll never see her baby daughter again.
- Shout-Out:
- The games features multiple to the Danganronpa series, the most prominent being the characters' frequent remarks that a Death Game might work better with children rather than adults.
- The mysterious vigilante in the Suspicion route's finale is a very obvious Expy of Zero from Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, down to his Gasmask Longcoat get-up.
- Story Branching: There are multiple narrative paths depending on how Harrison reacts to events on the first 57 days of the show. If he mainly chooses to be Suspicious about what the other contestants would be willing to do on a lawless island, the show turns into a Deadly Game, but focusing instead on Lust, Greed, or Trust causes different plots to play out.
- Too Dumb to Live: Francesca and Harrison's plan to usurp Giovanni in the Greed route amounts to Francesca holding a knife to Gio's throat so they can threaten him into wiring over the money. But since both Harrison and Francesca don't know the first thing about mob warfare the situation goes south almost immediatley, with Francesca trying to pull a double-cross on her own to get all the money and Gio using the ensuing fight between her and Harrison to easily free himself, snatch the knife and turn the tables on them. Gio even lampshades how poorly planned out the whole thing was while he's choking Harrison out.
- "Truman Show" Plot: The eleven people on the island are part of a dark web show called Inescapable which has the simple premise of seeing what happens if you put a bunch of people into a Closed Circle situation without any laws to hold them back from being their worst selves.
- Voice Grunting: Whenever a scene isn't fully voice acted, characters will just make noises or give off stock lines during a conversation.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Harrison reads the final culprit in the Suspicion route the riot act when he finds them out. Despite Daan, Francesca, Sasha and Annika insisting it had to be done, as otherwise Eva, Lumi and Isak were just going to get away with their murders scot-free, Harrison points out that their scheme also got Mia, a completely innocent party, killed and that no matter how they might justify it, by taking this action the trio have become cold-blooded killers themselves.
- Who Murdered the Asshole:
- Practically every case in the Suspicion route is this. Val and Gio, the murder victims, are a Spoiled Brat of an heiress and a brutish mob boss respectively and while the fact there was a murder shocks most of the contestants, no one really mourns Val. Downplayed with Gio, who despite his chauvinistic tendencies had a close friendship with Francesca who is heartbroken over his death.
- The finale turns this up a notch with the victims being all of the previous killers whom no one is especially sad to see go. Subverted with Mia who really was an innocent victim caught in the crossfire.
