Adventure Escape is a series of free mobile games developed by Haiku games. Each entry in the series is a Point and Click Adventure Game that's broken into multiple chapters with an overarching story. Each chapters plays kind of like a Room Escape Game due to only using a few of the rooms in the game, but the player spends as much time investigating and breaking into rooms as they do actually escaping them. To do so, the player has to solve puzzles of both the Lock and Key Puzzle and the Set Piece Puzzle variety.
Each individual game tells a self-contained story, making the different games more like spiritual successors to each other than in a true sequels. Even games starring the same protagonist can be played in any order.
Entries in the Series
Currently Playable Games
- Midnight Carnival: A witch named Maya arrives at the Midnight Carnival on All Hallow's Eve, when the forces of evil are strongest, and tries to rescue a young girl that's been kidnapped.
- Christmas Killer: Once again, Kate Grey is investigating a murder. A women is killed, and it appears to be the work of an serial killer from an unsolved case.
- Hidden Ruins: Archeologist Professor Burns is exploring the ruins left behind the Kumari civilization, who died out despite supposedly having discovered the secret to eternal life. He has to hurry if he wants to find the elixir of ternal life before his unscrupulous rival steals it for herself.
- Starstruck: A famous actress goes missing after leaving to pick up her new pet, and Kate Grey gets called in to investigate. It becomes obvious that foul play in involved when the actress's personal assistant is found dead.
- Murder Inn: A year after Jay's death in a tragic ski accident, a group of his friends (and Kate Grey) reunite. Then Jay's former girlfriend is murdered, and it's up to Kate Grey to find the truth.
- Allied Spies: American spies Ed and Marie parachute into occupied France with the mission of rescuing two scientists. But with a traitor providing their every move to the Germans, the mission will not be easy.
- Haunted Hunt: Moira is trapped in the house of Otto, a supernatural hunter. His house is laced with traps, and it'll be hard to escape, even with the help of Moira's shapeshifting powers.
- Dark Ruins: Professor Burns and the gang crash land on the island of a lost city, whose civilization worshiped a Storm Goddess. With a storm growing that could threaten the entire world, it seems that they must delve deeper into the ruins to survive the night.
- Trapmaker: While investigating a locked room murder, Kate Grey gets captured by Trapmaker, a criminal mastermind out to get revenge on all his former colleagues that wronged him. This is a part of the Adventure Escape Mysteries app.
- Cursed Crown: A princess's life is full or responsibilities and decisions. With a poisonous miasma spreading through the kingdom, and everyone from the neighboring kingdom vanishing overnight, Nimue must travel and learn to use her magic powers. This is part of the Adventure Escape Mysteries app.
- Trapmaker 2: A new murder puts Detective Kate Grey and Lieutenant Aaron Murphy back on Trapmaker's trail as they dive into his past to discover what motivates him. This is part of the Adventure Escape Mysteries app.
- Trapmaker 3: In the final installment of the Trapmaker trilogy, Detective Kate Grey must rescue her friends from the madman's clutches and see to it that he faces justice.
- Paradise Mystery: Kate Grey is ordered to go on vacation after the Trapmaker case is resolved, so Kate decides to visit a resort with her friend Melissa. It seems that a relaxing vacation is not in the docket, as Kate manages to find a dead body.
- Pirate's Treasure: The pirate Captain Conroy has gotten hold of one of a set of four legendary treasures. It would be easy to make a fortune selling it, but where's the fun in that? Instead he steals a treasure map and heads off for more adventure.
- Puzzle Pack: Several characters from previous games come together to prepare Sam for what lies ahead.
- The Covenant: Sam and her classmates are trapped by a Eldritch Abomination in a forest which demands a sacrifice each night until only one is left.
- Picture Perfect: Kate Grey is assigned to go to a high profile wedding to ensure nothing goes wrong. When the groom is found dead, Kate can't help but suspect foul play.
- Painted Worlds: Art dealer Gary gets swallowed by a painting! Now he's trapped in an impressionist world. Is he hallucinating or is it real?
- Psychic Squad: The Italian Affair: A psychic and a precog team up to investigate crimes.
- Legend of the Sacred Stones: Aila must use the Sacred Stones to defeat a Sorcerer and learn about her origins.
- The Sultan's Inventor: The time has come for Royal Inventor Zara and Sultan Omar to part ways. Will Zara's tenure in Yangara end on a high note?
- The Echo Bay Murders: Another case for Detective Kate Grey. She goes to Echo Bay to investigate a missing persons case. As usual, of course, someone is murdered.
- Lost Ruins: Revenge of Atlantis: Professor Burns is back... but ends up being possessed. Can the rest of his team save him?
- Mirror Man: A young boy encounters the menacing Mirror Man, a serial killer. He spends his life trying to defeat him. Darker and Edgier, this one is specifically for adults only, like The Covenant.
- Legend of the Time Stones: In this sequel to Legend of the Sacred Stones, Aila must rescue a boy from her village who stows away in her boat and disappears while she's investigating another temple.
- On Thin Ice: Another Kate Grey case.
- The Squire's Tale: Knight Cedric and his trusty squire Martin embark on a quest to find the legendary Sword of Light in order to defeat the Monster King.
- Vanishing Act: After something goes wrong at a magic show Detective Kate and Lieutenant Murphy were watching, Kate will reencounter a certain person from her past.
- Sweet Dreams: It's Revi's first night as Arlo's Dream Manager, and she's determined to give him the sweetest dreams ever. She's planned everything out perfectly, so nothing can go wrong. Right?
Retired Games
- The Scottish Castle: In the 16th-century Scotland, Iona finds herself trapped in a mysterious castle together with her Dumb Muscle unwanted suitor Finley.
- Murder Manor: Detective Kate Grey's is trapped at a fancy manor, when someone is killed during a dinner party.
- Time Library: Alice goes to the library to stock up on books, but instead goes on a time travel adventure along with self-proclaimed internet personality Hiro.
- Asylum: Anna wakes up in an asylum without her memories. Unfortunately there's a killer on the loose, and Anna keeps seeing this strange little girl everywhere.
- Cult Mystery: Detective Kate Grey's friend goes missing after apparently getting involved with a strange cult. Now it's up to Kate to rescue her.
- Space Crisis: Commander Morgan is delivering supplies to a space station. Unfortunately there's some unexpected damage, and now she has find a way to return home and rescue any survivors.
- Framed for Murder: Detective Kate Grey gets involved in yet another mystery. This time her mentor has been framed as the killer of a college student that's involved with the local drug ring.
- Cluedo:
Based on the Hasbro board game. Who killed Mr Black? Detective Brown investigates.
This game provides examples of:
- Actionized Sequel:
- Allied Spies has a lot more timing and dexterity based minigames to represent action scenes than most entries in the series.
- Legend of the Sacred Stones and Legend of the Time Stones has boss battles, something you wouldn't expect in point and click adventure games.
- Adventurer Archaeologist: Professor Burns.
- Adventures in Comaland:
- This turns out to be the case in Asylum.
- Also the plot of "Sweet Dreams", as Revi accidentally wrecks the Dream Machine inside Arlo's brain, meaning that Arlo won't wake up unless she helps him cross his dreamscape in order to reach the exit.
- Always Murder: There is always a dead body to investigate in games starring Kate Grey. There are a few exceptions, though: of the Trapmaker trilogy, only the second one involves a murder case. The first one begins with one as well before it's revealed that the victim was Trapmaker himself Faking the Dead, while the third one involves mass kidnapping.
- Ambiguous Syntax: Kate can bring up some of her past cases when interrogating Constantine. If she brings up the time she faced the Christmas Killer (a serial killer that strikes at Christmas), the conversation derails as Constantine tries to figure out why anyone would try to kill Christmas.
- Amnesiac Hero: Anna in Asylum wakes up with no memories and gradually regains them throughout the game.
- Art Evolution: Kate Gray used to be drawn with a much more prominent forehead in the earlier games.
- Bad Boss: Otto isn't any kinder to his human staff members than he is to the supernatural creatures he hunts. He killed several of them to prevent them from revealing his secrets.
- Battle Couple: Well, more like "Spy Couple", but Ed and Marie, the two main characters of Allied Spies, are American spies working together and a married couple.
- Bedlam House: The setting of Asylum, a construct of Anna's mind.
- Beneath Suspicion: In Murder Inn, turns out the killer is someone believed to have died the previous year.
- Bittersweet Ending: The "good" ending of The Covenant has Sam learn how to defeat The Hunger for good but her science teacher is dead along with six of her classmates (though one of them planned the events) and an unfortunate hiker. Sam's ramblings after the police discover her having set the forest on fire wind up getting her committed to a mental hospital.
- Bookcase Passage: Frank, from Murder Inn has one in his study.
- Breather Episode: Chapter 7 of Mirror Man is the only chapter where the main character doesn't have to deal with the titular serial killer.
- Busman's Holiday: Kate is a Mystery Magnet, so even when she goes on vacation, she still ends up doing all the same things she does at work.
- Calling Card: The Christmas Killer kills someone seven days before Christmas, and then again on Christmas. He also likes to leave behind snow globes.
- Chekhov's Gun: Peter's drone has a laser. This can used in Dark Ruins to cut vines that are out of reach of the protagonists. And to shoot death cultists that are trying to wipe out humanity.
- Circus of Fear: The Midnight Carnival.
- Closed Circle:
- In Murder Manor, Kate's car breaks down outside a manor during a thunderstorm.
- The Covenant has Sam and her friends become trapped in a forest that turns an Eldritch Location when a lunar eclipse occurs.
- Conveniently Placed Sharp Thing: Kate is able to use one of these to cut the ropes she's tied with in Framed for Murder.
- Damsel in Distress: Not uncommon in the series.
- Lily at the end of Asylum.
- Kate's goal in Cult Mystery is to rescue her friend Melissa.
- Emily, a little girl that's kidnapped near the start of Midnight Carnival.
- Perla, the actress that goes missing in Starstruck.
- Dashed Plot Line: Mirror Man starts in the year 1976 with the protagonist Julian as a 6-year old boy. The final chapter takes place in 2026 with him as a 56-year old man.
- Dead All Along: In The Squire's Tale, it turns out that The Monster King has been dead since the very beginning.
- Donut Mess with a Cop:
- One of the earliest puzzles in Christmas Killer involves organizing the donuts at the police station.
- In Trapmaker 2, the first crime scene has a box of donuts left by the team who responded to it first. Kate comments that the place they got them from are the best in town.
- Doomsday Device: What made the Monster King so dangerous; it is said it had enough power to wipe out an entire city in one hit.
- Dual-World Gameplay:
- The world appears different to Moira when she's shapeshifts, and several puzzles involve switching between her human and animal forms.
- Legend of the Time Stones has you travel between the past, present and future eras of the same locations.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: This is the villain's motivation in The Squire's Tale: Nira is a descendant of the heroine who defeated the Monster King, and is pretty pissed at how little people remember her ancestor, to the point that they can't even remember her name. Deciding that infamy is still better than obscurity, Nira joined Cedric and Martin in order to retrieve the Sword of Light and use it to power the Monster King's Doomsday Device.
- Dumb Muscle: Cedric from The Squire's Tale is an amazing fighter, but absolutely hopeless for anything else.
- The End... Or Is It?: Trapmaker 3 ends with Trapmaker being caught... and then thrown into a jail that he designed the security for.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The Hunger from The Covenant isn't too pleased that The Mole tricked all the potential sacrifices into performing the ritual without knowing about it, not to mention the underhanded tactics that they used to try and be the Sole Survivor.
- Evidence Scavenger Hunt: Some of the mystery games have sections that revolve around finding evidence at a crime scene.
- Evil All Along: In A Squire's Tale, it turns out that Nira was the true villain all along.
- Faking the Dead:
- The apparent victim in Trapmaker faked his own death to lure the other characters into a trap.
- In Mirror Man, Julian fakes his death after Shawn, aka the Mirror Man, breaks out of his grand jury hearing and leaves him for dead. He spends the next 20 years under an alias.
- Fiery Redhead: Iona from The Scottish Castle is a redhead and an independent Action Girl.
- Final Girl: Sam from The Covenant.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Kate Gray had this dynamic with her sister Allie; while Kate was mature and level headed, Allie was careless, always had her head in the clouds and Kate always had to clean after her. This persists into their adulthoods, with Kate becoming a morally upstanding and dedicated detective, while Allie ends up becoming a con artist.
- Genius Ditz: Hiro initially seems like useless social-media obsessed teen, but he's also the guy that discovers time travel in the future.
- Grid Puzzle: A couple appear in Asylum, one involving musical instruments and another with butterflies.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: The stars of the Puzzle Pack are textbook examples. Detective Grey (Choleric), Captain Kettlebottom (Sanguine), Princess Nimue (Phlegmatic), Professor Burns (melancholic).
- Haunted House: Otto's manor is haunted by at least three ghosts.
- Hell Hound: Moira rescues one from Otto, whom she names Beezle.
- Hint System: The player can spend stars, which can be found in limited amounts in the scenery or be awarded for solving a puzzle, to be given a hint. The player can also spend money to get more stars.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Kate captures Trapmaker by reprogramming his own traps to target him.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Martin the squire is pretty much this to Cedric, who is useless for anything that doesn't involve fighting.
- Intrepid Reporter: Kate is aided by one of these the Cult Mystery
- Ironic Nickname: Humble B, a famous musician, spends most of his time going on about he's cooler and richer than everyone else.
- Kilroy Was Here: The phrase "Baxter was here" is scribbled on top of the shelf in the first room in Haunted Hunt.
- Lampshade Hanging: Murder Inn has multiple lampshades about the tendency of Kate to open drawers or find passcodes by completing random puzzles.
- Rachel complains when a puzzle in Dark Ruins doesn't hand over a prize after being solved like normal.
- Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard:
- As an adventure game, it's not too surprising that this is what usually happens if the the protagonist gets captured by a villain.
- This is becomes deliberate as the Trapmaker series progresses due to the villain being impressed by Kate's ability to solve his puzzles.
- The Lost Lenore: Theresa, Prof. Burn's fiancee who died during an archeological excavation. The Storm Goddess uses the turmoil from this to judge him when testing the hearts of the protagonists.
- Loyal Animal Companion: Bert, a bird that Professor Burns rescues in Hidden Ruins. Afterwards Bert follows him around and picks up items that are out of reach.
- Macro Zone: One of the chapters of "Sweet Dreams" take place inside a version of Arlo's house that it's giant-sized, including the family's two pet cats (though they're thankfully both friendly and easy to distract).
- Make It Look Like an Accident: After Marco is killed by a king cobra, his body is abandoned off the park trail to make it appear like he was killed by the local rattlesnakes.
- Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Or, to be exact, set wrong a future case of Set Right What Once Went Wrong in Time Library. Vyra's plan is to prevent Hiro saving the world via the time machine and make sure the nuclear war begins.
- Master of Illusion: The villain in Midnight Carnival creates multiple illusions. Fortunately, the protagonist is a witch and can break illusions.
- Misanthrope Supreme: The sheriff from Dark Ruins turns out to secretly be a death cultist who wants the Storm Goddess to kill all humans, since humans are terrible.
- Modular Epilogue: The ending of Cursed Crown has a screen explaining the effect of each choice made throughout the game.
- The Mole:
- The American ambassador from Allied Spies is secretly a traitor, forwarding intel to Major Kressler of the Germans.
- One of the group in The Covenant deliberately set up the events in order to obtain a vision of the future. Who it is depends on choices you made in the game.
- Morphic Resonance: When transformed into an animal, Moira has a rose mark on her throat.
- Multiple Endings: There's two outcomes in The Covenant dependant on whether or not Sam accepts the offer at the end. The person who was behind the events changes based off who you paired up with over the course of the game.
- Mystery Magnet: Kate Grey is a police detective, but it's not until her fourth game that she gets involved in a case because her job assigned it to her.
- Never Found the Body: Jay's body was never actually recovered from the avalanche that killed him. It turns out that he's not dead after all.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: Crocodiles provide a reoccurring obstacle in Dark Ruins, although it's justified by one of the protagonists who notes that the storm is bad for the crocodiles and making the desperate.
- No MacGuffin, No Winner: Hidden Ruins ends with Professor Burns destroying the elixir.
- Non-Linear Sequel: Most of the games don't have any influence on each other. Even games starring the same protagonist, such as all the Kate Grey games, can be played in any order. The only exceptions, so far, being the Trapmaker trilogy, the Legend of the Sacred/Time Stones duology, and Puzzle Pack which is a prequel of sorts to The Covenant.
- No Swastikas: Despite Allied Spies has you fight Nazis in Nazi-occupied France in the middle of World War II, there isn't a single swastika in sight. This is especially noticeable with the nazi officers, who lack their iconic red armband with a swastika on it.
- Pixel Hunt: Sometimes it's hard to find all the objects needed in the backgrounds.
- Portal Door: There's a chapter in Midnight Carnival where a door goes to different locations based on the pattern and color of the buttons are pressed. The buttons are missing and have to be tracked down, in order to reach the final location. In universe, the portal door is probably accomplished by illusions rather than by wormholes.
- Puzzle Reset: Multiple puzzles come with a reset button.
- Red Herring Mole: Early in Trapmaker, Kate restores a robot that was reprogrammed to hostile, but the inventory item used to do this is the "supposedly fixed" robot brain, implying that the robot's helpful behavior might be an act. Kate mentions not trusting the robot if she examines it after the repair. Nothing comes of this. The robot even dies saving Kate and Edna from a bomb.
- Revenge by Proxy: In the Trapmaker 2 the villain gets back at a childhood bully by tricking the man into giving his mother an extremely addictive and harmful variant of the drug Trapmaker was making.
- "Simon Says" Mini-Game: The Final Boss of Legend of the Time Stones is beaten this way.
- Significant Anagram: The stage magician from "Vanishing Act" is named Gail Leary, whose name can be rearranged into Allie Gray, the name of Kate Gray's little sister
- Solve the Soup Cans: There's usually no reason behind the puzzles that give codes to the various locks, other than that it's a game.
- Someone Has to Die:
- Due to the rules of old magic, the Storm Goddess needs a sacrifice to stop the storm. Les volunteers, since he'll be dying soon anyways. However the Storm Goddess counts the villains death as the sacrifice, since she never specified a voluntary death.
- The Hunger from The Covenant demands that one of the party be sacrificed to it each night.
- Stock Puzzle:
- Block Puzzle: In Starstruck, there's a puzzle that involves pushing crates onto pressure plates.
- A puzzle in On Thin Ice involves pushing blocks on Frictionless Ice to form a staircase.
- Enter Solution Here: A lot of the puzzles exist to give you the combinations to a multitude of number locks.
- Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle: Seen in Time Library, but with different items than the traditional version, but the same solution.
- Grid Puzzle: A couple appear in Asylum, one involving musical instruments and another with butterflies.
- Light and Mirrors Puzzle: One puzzle in Haunted Hunt requires flipping mirrors so the lights illuminate all the tiles with spiders on them.
- Dark Ruins has a puzzle that involves splitting the light beams in order to reach four different targets.
- Klotski:
- Used to get a plug in Hidden Ruins.
- In its sequel Dark Ruins, it's an image of the Storm Goddess that needs to be moved to the top.
- Queens Puzzle: Murder Inn uses checker pieces to represent the eight queens. The puzzle needs to be solved in order to open a drawer.
- Songs in the Key of Lock: Appears in Hidden Ruins. Burns has to repeat the songs that Bert the bird sings.
- Towers of Hanoi: Appears in Time Library.
- Technologically Blind Elders: The librarian at the beginning of Time Library talks about how great modern technology is. You can now press buttons on the phone instead of rotating them. It's just an act, though.
- Timed Mission:
- The last set of puzzles in Space Crisis are done with a timer. Failure means restarting the whole sequence.
- Dark Ruins has a puzzle that involves deactivating a bomb within a time limit.
- Several bomb puzzles in the Trapmaker series have to be completed within a certain amount of time.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: There's a sequence in Starstruck that involves exploring overgrowth for anything unusual. Every time you discover a snake you have to start over, but the snakes don't move.
- Undercover as Lovers: Subverted. Ed and Marie's backstory for the mission is that they're newlyweds married two weeks ago, however, the two of them are married for real.
- Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Humble B has multiple pet tigers and exotic birds, while Perla was planning on getting a monkey for a pet.
- Villain Respect: The Trapmaker from the same named games, grows more impressed with Kate's skills at solving his traps as the games progress.
- Villain's Dying Grace: The traitor's last act is to save the protagonists from Major Kressler. Marie can acknowledge their dying grace, or point out that they're still a traitor.
- We Can Rule Together: The Trapmaker attempts this with Kate at the end of Trapmaker 3, saying that her talents are wasted working for the police but she refuses his offer.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Hiro would rather jump overboard than be alone with a dog.
- Workaholic: Detective Kate is just one step below Married to the Job. When asked what she plans to do for Christmas Break in The Christmas Killer she said that she was going to work on past unsolved cases, and not only her boss has to downright force her to take a vacation in Paradise Mystery, but when a dead boy appears, she can't help herself from launching her own investigation despite the fact that the local police is working on it (much to her friend Melissa's chagrin, who would prefer if Kate turned her "detective mode" off).
- Worst News Judgement Ever: The news at the beginning of Time Library involves the police investigating a suspicious pigeon that turned out to be a duck.
- You Have to Burn the Web: At one point in Asylum you use a flamethrower to clear a room of cobwebs (and the spider that made them).
- You Shouldn't Know This Already: It's possible to access Constantine's suitcase and set up the interrogation room correctly without accessing his record, but he won't react until you do. You also can't open the secret compartment in the suitcase until he mentions it.
