Escape from the Restaurant 1.0

Warning: You need to have a special piece of software to run this game. You can find the special software right here. Then, you'll need to follow the instructions in the review to play the game.

Point and click games used to be all the craze until around the 2010s. Now, they're usually relegated to mid size productions or simple indie titles. The genre also proved incredibly popular among flash game creators, due to the relatively simple planning and programming that goes into such a game. One creator, Tesshi-E, became known for short, bite-sized escape room games. Let's look at one of the first games he ever made - Escape from the Restaurant.

To play Escape from the Restaurant, you have to unzip all the files into the folder you extracted the FPSoftware files to. Then, navigate to FPSoftware -> Basilisk-Portable -> Basilisk-Portable.exe. Afterward, drag the HTML onto the Basilisk browser.

This game has no story, which is completely fine in this genre. Tesshi-E has hasn't yet adopted their photorealistic style yet so the graphics definitely look outdated. However, as you play the game, you'll quickly notice the foundation to their puzzle design ability. Unfortunately, there's no English version for this game, so all the Japanese hints at the bottom may throw you off.

You click on the buttons at the side of the screen to navigate around, click on an object or door to zoom in on it and have to figure out how to solve a number of puzzles in the restaurant to get out.

All in all, Escape from the Restaurant is a great entry by Tesshi-E and really shows off the creator's strength in escape room game design.