Remember how much you paid for this game. Feel bad now. Now make sure to close all non-essential programs running on your computer, because they will seriously slow down Escape Machines because it was not optimized to compete for your RAM and CPU.

After the menu items float in, hover the mouse over one of them. Listen to that boop. Appreciate that outdated sound effect of a boop. You paid money for this Flash game. Feel bad now.

Take a deep breath. Breathe in deep. Feel the air flowing through our nostrils and into yours. We are becoming one with the outdated Flash game. I forget where I was going with this. I'll come back to this later.

Hey buddy, I work with data for a living. Lots of it. I know where you live, most likely. So I know it's no joke when data plant is under an attack. It doesn't matter that grammar is bad, my data plant is the serious business. I travel long trip from old country for this. You like? Me neither.

Serious gameplay guide time, thanks for bearing with my rambles earlier. Good job, reader. Now it's to learn how to actually ESCAPE THOSE MACHINES!

Forget the grenades, screw the shotgun, and lay off the laser, man. Maxin' out the pistol is all you need. Why? Because the other weapons do absolutely nothing different in strength or speed, and just cost money to use. Buy some healthpacks, max out your pistol, max out your suit's health and armor values (but forget Load or Revive bc they don't work or you don't need them), and you'll have everything that actually does what it's supposed to.

The screen tearing throws off your game a lot, but that's okay. As long as there's a a third of a maximized screen's worth of distance between you and the robots, you should be safe. Mantain that distance at all times. If you get any closer, you will soon be turned into pre-rendered swiss cheese and will get decimated by the Yiddish-speaking robots and their bumping single techno track. Now while staying a third of the screen away, keep strafing circles around the machines and never. Let. Go of the fire button. Keep your cursor on them, strafe circles around them and repeat until they blow up and garble in pain. If there are multiple machines that aren't right next to each other, escape immediately. If need be, you can strafe a half-circle back and forth. But pick those machines off one at a time. Never let them surround you or prepare for some serious pixelated pain and 'splosions. Peas and esses.

When it comes to the tank bosses, you can settle for a quarter-screen's worth of distance. But make sure you're alone. Those tanks come with machines to help them. Again, pick the machines off one at a time if you want to live.

Thank you, Jim Gaffigan, for that joke. Great comedian, in my opinion. Buy his albums. Rodney Dangerfield is good too and I'm getting distracted.

When it comes to the final boss of Level 3, the giant robot walker... it has three parts: A Left Cannon, a Head and a Right Cannon. You only need to destroy the head to win the level, but it's blocked by those cannons. And those cannons are blocked by high-velocity missles. Missle cannons, yo. This fight will take place in a large open parking lot, much like the time you got sucker punched by Billy down at the mall because he wanted your New Balance sneakers. Screw you Billy.

Take advantage of this space and never stop strafing back and forth in straight lines, from one end of the lot to the other. Make sure you are just close enough for your pistol to hit the Walker, but it's okay if you need to step back in the middle of strafing, to give your self enough time to dodge those Walker Rockets. But don't stop there with the strafing cycles. Run behind the building and find the rows of boxes. Open them if you need more shield energy or health. Continue running in straight lines from one end of the building to the other, blow up those machines hiding behind the building and smoking cigarettes, replenish some things, and wait for the Walker to lose interest and turn back to its default position of staring down the parking lot. Soon as it loses interest, run back in, get some shots in, and repeat this sissy shootout. Eventually, you will win because you fought smarter, not harder.

But then realize you truly lost because you spent time on all this, and it's not even the completed game. Nice shootin', Tex. Feel bad now.

Thanks to McKale. A true friend who gave Escape Machines a try even though he had very little to lose except money on his electricity bill. His input on the game and his struggles with escaping machines motivated me to spend my lunch break on writing this, instead of actually eating lunch or going for a jog around data plant where I work. And the nine cents of Steam money he spend on this. Maybe you'll meet him in Dust 2 on CS:GO. Maybe you'll attempt to tackle a tractor and lose.