Phone Escape: Hopeless is a new locked-room puzzler where your only lifeline is your phone

• What would you do if you woke up alone, apart from your phone, and had to figure out how to escape?
• Well, you can find out what would do in Enigmaticon’s new game, Phone Escape: Homeless
• Use a faux-OS and your phone camera to navigate a 3D world and interact with your kidnapper

What would you do if you woke up locked in a room, alone, and with no idea how to escape? It’s a great ice-breaker of a question and sure to intrigue/alarm your date, friend or boss.

But for developer Enigmaticon it’s the concept behind their new game, Phone Escape: Hopeless. Using your phone, you’ll have to solve puzzles at the whim of your mysterious kidnapper, all while plotting a way to (hopefully) escape their clutches.

Phone Escape uses an AR concept, where your phone becomes, well, the phone in the game. You view the world using the camera feature, access a faux-operating system and interact with your kidnapper via text messages. It’s an innovative mix of the AR overlay used in other horror games as well as the ARG elements of using the features so familiar to mobile gamers as in-game mechanics.

Ring, ring, ring, ring, banana phone

You might recall ages back when Silent Hills, the Hideo Kojima entry in the famous horror franchise, was canned. One of the many features that have been revealed to have been in planning since its shelving was the idea of the game sending you messages via your phone, heightening the sense of paranoia and fear.

So while Phone Escape is marginally less impressive, since it’s obvious it isn’t real, you’d be forgiven for getting immersed anyway in an obviously fake but not unfamiliar facsimile of the OS most of us use daily. The addition of a 3D environment you interact with by pointing your camera is also quite an impressive addition, and sure to give you the willies if you’re playing in a dark room.

Phone Escape: Hopeless is out now for the iOS App Store and Android, with a lite version offering a free trial of a short section and a paid version with the full game.

Want more spooky fun? Check out our list of the top 25 best horror games for Android for more thrills and chills!