A.W. Apps/Flee the Facility

Flee the Facility is a popular escape game created by the group known as A.W. Apps. Typical gameplay involves up to four players pitted against a single enemy referred to as the Beast, who they must avoid while completing objectives to win the game.

Contributors

 * - Lead Developer, Gemstone Designer, Hammer Designer
 * - Thumbnail Artist
 * - Hammer Designer
 * - Hammer Designer

Gameplay
Flee the Facility is a teamwork-based game in which up to four players are designated as 'Survivors' and have to work together to hack 3-5 computers (depending on the number of Survivors) around the map and escape through one of two exits that are highlighted after all of the computers have been hacked. Meanwhile, one player is placed into a small brown room and is designated as the Beast, whose mission is to capture all Survivors and therefore prevent them from escaping to win the game. After 15 seconds of being in the boxed room, the Beast spawns into one of several random locations on the map in first-person view and can start hunting down the Survivors.

General
Between each round there is a 45-second intervention in which players can explore the lobby and vote for one of three maps by stepping on the appropriate plate. Rounds can take up to 15 minutes, and at the end of each round all players are shown how much XP and currency they were awarded according to how many specific actions they accomplished while playing the game. XP goes towards the level system, which does not signify much besides how much time a person has played Flee the Facility. Currency can be used to purchase crates containing various cosmetics to use in place of the default hammer and gemstone, and these cosmetics can be traded using the Trade Hub which can be accessed through a tunnel on the right side of the lobby.

Survivors
Survivors are tasked with locating the computers on the map and successfully hacking them, then opening one of the two exit doors and escaping before the Beast can capture them. At the start of each round, Survivors are given a 15-second headstart. Although they have no special abilities, Survivors are able to lie down and crawl by pressing the Shift key which allows them to travel through grey-colored openings underneath walls that the Beast cannot go through, and they are able to jump without being slowed down which is also something that the Beast cannot do. Lastly, Survivors can slam doors behind them, making it useful to stop the Beast for a few seconds if it is chasing them. They can make use of these three advantages to avoid the Beast while completing the objectives needed to win the round.

When the Beast is nearby, Survivors will see a glow (color depends on the cosmetic gemstone equipped by the Beast) and hear the "Horror Race" soundtrack with a fast tempo as well as a faint heartbeat noise. The sounds from the Beast will drown out any other noise from things such as keyboard clicks while hacking computers, and for this reason is quite easy to detect if the Survivor has their sound settings turned up to a reasonable level. Survivors must stay away from the Beast, as one hit from his/her hammer is enough to temporarily knock the Survivor out while the Beast drags them to a cryogenic chamber to wither away. However, other Survivors are able to rescue trapped Survivors by walking up to the chamber and pressing E, which will instantly release them and stop them from taking more damage. If the Beast is camping, the Survivor will stop taking damage until the Beast goes away. However, they will still keep the initial damage as a downside.

The most XP you can get as a Survivor is 700 and the most coins is 48c. Saving - 100XP, 10c, Escaping - 300XP, 20c, Hacking- 50XP, 3c per computer.

Hacking
Hacking a computer is done by walking up to a keyboard around the computer and pressing the E key, which will initiate the process and can be tracked by a progress bar at the bottom of the screen. Some popups will occur while a computer is being hacked (signified by this sound), and in this instance all Survivors that are hacking the computer must press E when the red line on the circle moves over the white space to avoid encountering an error. If at least one Survivor fails to close the popup at the right time, the Windows XP error sound is played while the computer screen will turn red and an icon will temporarily be displayed above it. This red icon can also be seen by the Beast, which means encountering errors can give away the locations of Survivors. Once a computer has been successfully hacked, the screen will turn from blue to green and the 'Computers Left' counter will decrease by one. Green screen means the computer is successfully hacked, blue means it's not finished or nobody found it and red means a player failed and abandoned it.

Escaping
Finally, when all 5 computers have been hacked, Survivors must go to one of two exit doors on either side of the map and initiate the opening process (if the door is not already opened) by walking up to it and pressing E. This produces a very loud grating sound which is audible by the Beast, but once the exit door has been opened, the Survivors can simply walk through and win the round.

The Beast
On the other hand, one player is designated as the Beast and will spawn in an enclosed room. This room shows the Beast what their objective is, in the form of a Robloxian trapped in a cryogenic chamber with the phrase 'CAPTURE THEM ALL' written in a graffiti-style font on the wall behind the chamber. The Beast has 15 seconds to choose one of four abilities (the only one available is Runner, which they can press Q to sprint for a limited amount of time before the cooldown, although MrWindy, the developer, has said the others will be unlocked soon) before spawning into the map in one of several random locations.

The Beast's only objective is to knock out all Survivors and capture them in cryogenic chambers before they can escape, where they should gradually lose health before being completely frozen and therefore dead. To accomplish this, the Beast is equipped with a hammer (appearance can vary due to cosmetic hammers) that can knock out Survivors in one hit to allow the Beast to take them to a chamber, as well as the special ability they chose at the start.

The Beast has a few disadvantages that should be taken into consideration, the most obvious of which is the forced first-person view which means that the Beast has to manually look behind them rather than being able to drag the camera like Survivors in third-person can. Jumping will slow the Beast down for a second, which means Survivors can use structures such as tables to avoid them since Survivors do not lose speed when jumping. The Beast will also lose speed when whacking a player with their hammer, causing them to rub it across their arm for about 3 seconds (There is a slight glitch that occurs in which the Beast may hit the Survivor, but they will not turn into a ragdoll, although the whack sound occurs, but if this does happen, the Beast will be slowed down significantly while the Survivor can escape). Penultimately, the Beast cannot lie down and crawl to go through openings underneath walls like Survivors can, which means they are instead forced to use doors or jump through broken windows which is usually much slower than the time taken for a Survivor to crawl through an opening. Finally, the Beast can't stand directly in front of the cooler, or the Survivor cannot lose any health.

When the Beast hits a Survivor with their hammer, the Survivor will temporarily turn into a ragdoll form which allows the Beast to leash them by clicking on their body once. However, Survivors can still flop away loosely by mashing the spacebar rapidly and pressing the up arrow key, making it much harder to leash them. After the ragdolled Survivor has been leashed, many light blue capsule icons will be shown to the Beast around the map, which signify locations where there are open chambers for the Survivor to be captured in. The Beast can walk up to one of these open chambers with the Survivor in tow and press E to enclose them in the chamber and leave them to freeze to death, although during this time they can be rescued by other Survivors. The Beast wins when all remaining Survivors have been captured.

The most XP you can as the beast is 800, 200 per player frozen and 15 coins for each player, 60c in total.

Glitches
There is a glitch that can occur where the Beast ends up holding their hammer in the default downward arm position, rather than the usual 90 degree raised position. The hammer also ends up moving in the same motion in which the arm moves back and forth in a radius motion in usual walking. Basically saying, they don't hold their hammer up. It just ends up being attached to the end of their hand. However, they can still swing their hammer, and it will settle back to the same glitched position after swinging.

There is another glitch where the game does not register the collision of a player against a wall for a split second, and the player ends up walking into the wall. However, the game then registers the collision immediately, rendering the player stuck in the wall.

If a Beast is dragging a player who is lagging (pretty badly), the game physics will register the person being dragged as being constantly teleported short distances. If the player being dragged ends up “teleporting” inside the Beast's body, the game physics will try to sharply push them away, sometimes throwing the two apart so fast that the Beast is knocked through walls(this happens too fast to see the two being thrown apart, it appears to the eye as teleporting). The Beast then ends up in a room different than the one the Beast was in an instant ago. The game still registers the lagging person as being dragged, so the lagging person “teleports” to somewhere near the Beast, or this can happen when the ragdoll hits a wall while being dragged.

If a player somehow manages to fall out of the map during a round, they will be teleported into the main room.

If two players press E at the same time at a computer they both hack the same computer keyboard at the same, one behind the other player. Sometimes when you fail the computer glitch you can break the computer, putting yourself and other Survivors in a harder position to win.

On very rare occasions, the Beast can spawn without its hammer. This is basically a free win for the Survivors (unless the Beast leaves), but the Beast can still use its runner.

Reception and criticism
Flee the Facility has received positive reviews and is a well played game. However, criticism is directed to the major problems in the game that players complained about. One of them is how long a single round is, as spectators who have just spawned in usually have to wait 10–15 minutes before the round ends. This means that 4 full rounds of gameplay take around an hour.

The map 'Facility_0' has received negative feedback from some players, as the map has a poor layout and is usually the most voted for map as well, neglecting the other maps. Generally, the number of available maps is also subject to complaints since it means the game becomes stale very quickly without a larger variety of maps to play on. Since then, the Homestead and Airport maps have been added, giving more variety of maps to play on, and more maps are to come soon.

Players have also criticized the Beast camping, (also known as puppyguarding). It has been partially fixed by preventing health loss if the Beast is within a certain radius of a captured player, however this radius is quite small which means the Beast can still camp nearby they desire.

Homestead is considered the worst map in the game and has also received negative feedback about being the Beast in this map. Players were complaining that the Beast cannot use their runner very wisely, as there are lots of bushes and fallen trees that Survivors can easily maneuver, while the Beast is slowed down by jumping on top of them. This could likely be a reason why players pick other maps instead of this one to save themselves from being the Beast.