Prince of Persia: Escape

Hard-as-nails platformers don't often find a home on touchscreens due to the need for precise controls, but that didn't stop Ubisoft from giving it a shot. The controls are surprisingly tight, and the try-die-repeat loop is actually pretty fun, as long as you don't have Internet access. Otherwise, the ads become unbelievably invasive, forcing a 5-30 second pause between gameplay at almost every death (in a game where death is designed to happen a lot). To make matters worse, reports from other players claim that paying to remove ads doesn't actually work.

I was able to actually play the game once I turned data off, and I ended up enjoying it for a bit. Escape encouraged me to learn the patterns and structures of levels, and I felt myself improve as I played, which was quite fulfilling. However, after 30 levels, I started to notice reused level pieces; after 60, I stopped feeling challenged; after 70, I was bored.

Prince of Persia: Escape offers an enjoyable time-waster (when ads are disabled), but repetition steps in pretty quickly to take away all of the fun. More variety in the level structure, or even new gameplay gimmicks could remedy this, but the developers seem uninterested in improving this title. For that reason, it wouldn't hurt too bad to pass this one up.
The game can be downloaded for Android here (as of 9/9/20): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ketchapp.pope&hl=en_US
The game can be downloaded for iOS here (as of 9/9/20): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/prince-of-persia-escape/id1435320545

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