Based on the image, I would start with an inventory.

- Hands, fingernails.

- Shirt, Belt, Pants

- Torch (Split into Club, Metal Bits(shielding), Flame, Fuel Source)

- Potentially any loose material (Mud, potential Rock, rock bits)

- Hair.

To be honest, the torch inside the room seems out of place. Based on the logic you spoke about, who would put an ad-hoc version of a flaming mace in a prisoners cell?

Not that you'll take that suggestion, but I'll present some ideas that presume the torch is not in the room, however there still is one across the hall, well out of reach.

1, Gain rope.

- - Use Belt

- - Turn Pants into shorts, by tearing strips off and tying them together.

2, Gain Torch

- - Tie Lasso with rope. hook it on the torch across the hall. pull it back.

3, Gain Rock

- - feel the wall around the room, bumping pieces of it, until you find a lose piece. work with it to remove it.

4, Gain Tools.

- - Hit the metal of the torch with the rock until it breaks off. Makes a lot of noise, brings guards, losses fire/light.

5, Gain Tools with less noise.

- - Blow out the torch and wrap your shirt in it. Loses light. Now hit with the rock, quieter, but not quiet enough. Guards still come, though you get a moment more.

6, Gain dirt.

- - Scrape dirt off the ground, corners, walls, etc... Collect a small handful of it, presuming damp/mud like.

7, Gain tools with near silence

- - Repeat step 5, but this time place the dirt under it, to make less noise from the ground impacts.

(Given the nature of the game, you might want a worry bar, essentially a bar that rises as you worry about guards, traps, etc... I.e. too much noise, coming up to a corner, etc... Even though it won't do much for the game, players will quickly learn that it helps measure their actions, and they can choose lighter actions when replaying the same area. (presuming numerous devastating fails.)

8, Gain Tools and Fire with near silence.

- - repeat step 7, but carefully remove the fire/fuel source first. - presume a split of a Wooden club, a metal bowl for holding the fuel, and the metal wrapping that also helps hold the fuel/fire, but now you can see light earlier.

9, open the cell.

- - use the metal bits (tools) to open work with the door. - doesn't work, guard comes by notices torch, you die.

10, Open the cell better.

- - Put the fuel/fire back into the metal bowl and carry that to hold the light. pick the lock, Before completing the lock pick, the bowl gets too hot, AOOHH! your drop it clank, guard comes, you die. (essentially all my plans leave you defenseless, even with the club, until you can get out of the cell instead of being a fish in a barrel.)

11, Open the cell, succeed.

- - Repeat step 10, but this time carry the bowl in the fabric from your shirt. it lights the way and doesn't get too hot. This time, you pick the lock before a guard shows up.

12, Open the cell door

- - CREEEEEEEAKKKKKK! loud creaking noise brings guards. But you don't have a club in hand

13, Open the door quieter

- - Squeeze the dirt clump to get a finer mud liquid out, directly over the hinges, and work it into them. When opening, there is still a noise, but not as loud.

You should leave the room with a club, a metal bowl of fire, a rope looped through your belt (from your pants shreddings), metal bits, and a bit of mud (where to put it though)

- - Bit of dirt is in hand under bowl of fire?

- - Bit of dirt is smeared all over you as a bit of camouflage?

If you have the dirt clump it can be thrown in eyes/face of a guard to distract them.

Some additional possibilities.

1) Sleeping guard just down the hall, keys or weapon in ropes reach?

2) using belt or shredded pants rope, produce noose, be ready for guard as they pass. (this would be for more of a brawl type game)

3) Use the metal bits to remove the pins from the door hinges.

4) Complete the first part, attempt to reassemble the torch, put it back on the wall, use dirt to stuff up the key hole, so it doesn't latch again and shut the door. Wait for the guard to pass and then follow them quietly.

- - This helps with the idea that if you get out, and go the direction that the patrolling guard is not, you will find it takes you almost immediately to a guard room, with others, armed. then the patrolling guard calls out about the empty cell, and you are trapped in the path of both sets of guards, with nothing but a small wooden club for a weapon.

- - If you follow the guard, you come up to the same spot, but now, they thing that way is cleared. To make their rounds, they will leave out another entrance. While they are distracted, you can take things from the edge of the room. like a weapon, shield, change of clothes.

- - With a changes of clothes and some batting material (could be other clothes or bags) you can sneak back to your cell again, setup a dummy in your old clothes, that looks like you sleeping in the corner. Wait just out of site. until the guard passes again. Now, you can escape without sounding an alarm. Or at least you can progress farther before that point.

What would be really good, is that each time you die, and go back to a certain point, it shows flash backs of what the guards noticed/heard. I.e. heard you hitting the torch with the rock, didn't see you in the cell/began search, torch on wall was gone, cell door was open, etc... Even a little bit later (but not too far) things you did could still affect you. So a great deal of the game is to make sure things are not out of place. This will give you clues as to how to do things right, by showing you specifically what did not work.

- One idea, is that when you get to the guard room, the second time, that you over hear "GO make one more round, and then you can take off for the night". Now, you know that if you over power that guard on their trip, you can dress as them and just leave, up the stairs. Nothing out of place.

- - replace the dummy in your cell, with the dead/unconscious guard, so the body isn't noticed.

- - Then, you start finding your way through another guard ridden cell section That is mostly just a timing issue. Once you get through it, you complete the level, and the past actions don't catch up with you. The timing section after leaving the guard section, is to give the guards time to get back around, and 'notice' anything out of place, like a dead naked guard on the floor. Once that happens, the exit to your level is sealed until the guards bring things to order, so you can fight them off, but what will ultimately will not complete the level.

Stormynature:

1. yes the door is the only way out. as I pointed out it's an underground dungeon and the builders had the common sense of not making it easy for the prisoners

2. well you could in theory interact with anything through the bars. however this is still an Action RPG and not a point and click adventure - there's meant to be player->item->world interaction and even item transformations via using them with world objects (ie. cook a raw meat in a fire and you get a cooked meat), but not as far as transforming item A with your bear hands to get item B, or using inventory item A with a inventory item B to create inventory item C.

3. since the game doesn't include a system/interface to for example take off your shirt and tear it to make a lasso, the clothing is irrelevant. other than that there's the walls that are made out of rocks, a haystack bed and a torch. it's meant to be a crude prison not one of those game prisons that have all the commodities I'd even avoid having rats because of the extra effort of modelling/texturing/animation/AI, gotta focus here.

4. there isn't really anything advanced about the guards that's already pre-set in terms of action and reaction. the idea right now is there would only be a guard in your section that would check on you if you do something weird, or a physician to check you anyway if you take too long to escape. other than that you might catch a patrolling guard that makes a visit to the section you're on. but I can build on it and script guard actions and reactions for any situation I want (which is why I compiled a list of situations on my previous reply).

Dan:

I think you're going too far with interactions, I'd need to extend my game's interaction system/interface quite a lot to make any of that work. see point 2. that I just wrote above.

and other than that as I said you're stripped of all your stuff: your inventory consists of only your rope belt and your shirt (pants can't be taken off)

now I do agree the torch seems out of place. I wasn't sure if to put it there but thing is, for both performance and style reasons the torch lights have a small light radius and so if there's no torch inside the cell it ends up being super dark. but I just might put more torches out and make only *their* radius bigger so that some light leaks into the cell. that would take out any option regarding the torch though.

besides that, torches are glued to the wall

the possibility of the door making a lot or a little noise is good, but again I wouldn't know how to make the interaction for that (right now the game has a 'press some button to interact with the environment' way). and again I don't want to deviate too much to implement new features :/

your additional posibilities:

- guard sleeping down the hall: he's too far and the keys are only on his inventory (common sense here!)

- could work. as I said at first the game offers single handed swordfight and fist fighting. I'd just add an interaction to slam the door to produce noise instead though.

- there's no metal bits at hand

- again too complex/advanced for this game

and for the next part, that wouldn't work. the whole game is only one level. plus, the patrolling guards have quite random patterns

each time you die... no. flashbacks are too complex to code, and the game rebuilds all of its random elements when you die and re-start (including the whole dungeon!)

please guys, let's keep the interactions to a simple level

Solving the wrong problem, IMO.

You have already decided the game is going to be mostly action, and don't want to put a lot of time on crafting systems that would support an interesting initial "get out of the cell" puzzle. I don't see why you'd put in a puzzle at all, then. Just begin the game at the moment the player can get out of the cell.

Let's say the character has managed to create a lockpick and has learned to open any cell door in a reasonable amount of time (but not necessarily other doors in the prison). And let's say we want to have some "locked in" time in the game for flavor. If there are occasional guard patrols too strong to beat, but which are only alerted to the player if they see the player outside a cell, the player would have incentive (or be forced to) occasionally duck into a cell (not necessarily their own) and pretend to be locked in until the patrol has passed.

Solving the wrong problem, IMO.

You have already decided the game is going to be mostly action, and don't want to put a lot of time on crafting systems that would support an interesting initial "get out of the cell" puzzle. I don't see why you'd put in a puzzle at all, then. Just begin the game at the moment the player can get out of the cell.

well if I wanted not to include an initial "get out of the cell" puzzle I wouldn't have made the thread in the first place. The thing is just that I don't want too much of an advanced/convoluted game system both because of dev times and because it doesn't fit the theme/genre/vision of the game. But that doesnt mean I can't have a multi-choice type of game, it just means it should be kept simple.

Let's say the character has managed to create a lockpick and has learned to open any cell door in a reasonable amount of time (but not necessarily other doors in the prison). And let's say we want to have some "locked in" time in the game for flavor. If there are occasional guard patrols too strong to beat, but which are only alerted to the player if they see the player outside a cell, the player would have incentive (or be forced to) occasionally duck into a cell (not necessarily their own) and pretend to be locked in until the patrol has passed.

not a bad idea, but knowing it's an Action game and you'll already be armed with a sword (and forced to fight other guards anyway) it'd be much more practical to just fight them, or if you're going for stealth just hiding in the shadows, rather than needing to lockpick other cells to hide in.

im back at this. the prison cell has received a small update with some small texture work and the removal of the torch.

overall it's much darker (might seem too dark, but when running the game on fullscreen it's good)

without the torch though, my escape possibilities have shrunk. so far I have the following:
- take out a couple of loose rocks off the wall and grind them to fabricate a lockpick to open the door lock (too easy?)
- make noise to attract a guard that will open the door (need a reason why he'll do that), and you can attack him and get out (too obvious?)
- make the cell have a window to the neighbor cell, and devise a plan to help the other guy escape first and then open the door for you to get out (but I still need a way for him to actually get out) - he might actually open your cell or leave you there. (good but how does he actually go out?)
- use rock or rope across the cell bars to hit/pull the passing guard and kill him (too easy?)
- for the case where the player isn't able to find a way out, if a lot of game time passes a physician will come do a check on you accompanied by a guard, which you should attack when they open the door

willing to hear some more strategies

You could put the torch outside the cell, have a guard sit guarding nearby (sleeping?)

Then you lasso the torch to set the guard on fire and hope he stops somewhere near a cell.

(the player character is a POW

what other ways can you guys come up to for escaping a prison cell?

start with the way it could really be done.

loose rocks in the cement, he's able to tear a couple off and eventually build two lockpicks out of grinding them.

probably not happening in the real world. rather contrived. that would turn me off right there.

getting keys from guards would be more realistic. by pickpocket, or distraction while the keys are unattended.

since the setting is medieval, options are limited.

1. weakness in the cell (loose mortar, window bars, half barrel hinges, etc.)

2. unlock cell door by getting keys somehow, or getting guard to unlock door. unless there's another weakness in the cell, this is the only way out.

3. outside assistance. which you've ruled out.

4. acquiring realistic materials to pick lock. which you've ruled out.

5. magic, act of god, miracle, etc. don't think these apply here.

all of these may be pursued solo or in cooperation with other prisoners.

and they may be combined together. exploit weakness in cell to establish contact with other prisoners to form plan to cause distraction and get keys.

Waterlimon: that actually sounds reasonable. added to the list.

Norman: thanks for your input, it seems you got a good grasp of what I'm looking for in terms of 'realistic and reasonable' options

yep I'm actually looking for ideas of how it could really be done :)

maybe I could open the idea of getting external help. however the classic "you get a key/lockpick/knife from a present delivery" is ruled out

the option to force your way out with violence when a physician comes for a check sounds unrealistic as well. I guess a substitute option could be getting your cell opened by a friend that's infiltrated the prison dressed as a guard. however that would make players ask themselves "why can't we just fake he's transferring me to a different prison and get out?" - uhm maybe we get caught just as he's opening the door and he's killed while the player gets out of the cell.

getting the key from pickpocketing doesn't sound too good for me. after all you're in and the guard is out the cell. having him walk close a cell door while the prisoner is just by, and actually get pickpocketed would really make him deserving of a cruel death :)

on to your list:

1. not a fan of this possibility overall, but I guess it's acceptable if the weakness is only at a cell-to-neighbor-cell window (not at the cell's door), so maybe you're just lucky the window is weak and the neighbor cell happens to be empty and open

2. I can't think of a reason why the guard would unlock the door. however being able to attack/kill him from inside sounds fine if executed properly (tricky)

3. ok yes I'm ruling this back in. a realistic and reasonable idea would be great here

4. it's not really ruled out, I just don't want a really obvious and unrealistic access to lockpick materials, which is why cells are pretty much empty. I know grinding rocks to create a lockpick sounds too forced/unrealistic, but that's the best I could come up with at first. what about using a rock to grind a rat/meal bone to create a lockpick?

5. right, these do not apply here. magic and the gods' involvement in the world is extremely limited in my custom world and not an option here

indeed these may be combined together, but since I want different options and there's only so many reasonably ways you can escape a prison cell, I'd rather not waste options by making one out of two.

and I'm looking to pursue all of the options solo except for one co-op option with a neighbor prisoner (gotta decide which option is the best for this)

You said its a POW. The classic thing is he gets brought to an interrogation room and there he can:

- steal a metal piece for using as a lockpick or saw or for digging under the cell wall(its likely the floor was just dirt?) later

- attack the interrogator(maybe with a hidden rock from cell wall or chair)

- someone does something crazy to attract the attention of the guards to give someone else opportunity to grab some item/more easily attack them from behind/escape while not looked at

The sleeping/drunk guard with keys on table/wall hook/belt you get with some lasso/stick/trained rat/whatever while he is not watching seems also a likely method in a medieval setting?