Hey Xbox players! With Escape from Ever After launching fairly soon, we thought now’s the perfect time to dive into what makes this game tick. So, if you’ve ever wondered what happens when classic storybook heroes get stuck in a soul-crushing office job, you’re about to find out.

Escape from Ever After is a Paper Mario-inspired RPG that takes the hero’s journey and tosses it straight into corporate bureaucracy. It’s equal parts adventure game, turn-based combat, and workplace satire—and it’s weirder than it sounds.

Meet Flynt Buckler, your typical storybook hero out to settle the score with his nemesis, Tinder the dragon. But when he finally reaches her castle, things get weird. The fire-breathing villain he expected? Nowhere to be found. Instead, her once-majestic fortress has been gutted and rebuilt as a soulless office complex, complete with fluorescent lighting, mandatory coffee breaks, and employees trapped in the worst kind of grind.

Turns out Ever After Inc.—a megacorporation from the real world—has discovered storybooks make for excellent cheap labor. Dragons file TPS reports. Knights optimize synergies. Heroes attend team-building exercises. And there’s no dragon to slay that can fix this mess.

So Flynt does the only logical thing: he joins the company. To take down Ever After Inc., he’ll need to climb the corporate ladder from within, rallying other trapped storybook characters and figuring out how to rewrite the rules before it’s too late.

Combat That Keeps You In the Fight

Escape from Ever After builds on classic turn-based RPG combat but keeps you engaged every single turn through timing-based action commands. When Flynt throws his buckler or an enemy winds up for an attack, you need to nail your button presses. Perfect timing means extra damage on offense and flawless blocks on defense. Mess up your inputs and you’ll pay for it.

It’s the kind of system that makes every turn feel active rather than passive. No sitting back and watching animations play out—you’re always involved.

More Than Button-Mashing

Raw damage only gets you so far. Enemies have their own tricks: armor that shrugs off weak hits, metal shields that deflect certain attacks, poison that chips away at your health, and battlefield hazards that punish careless aggression.

The Research system lets you study enemies mid-battle, permanently revealing their health and weak points. That information gets saved to your Bestiary, giving you an edge in future encounters. The more you learn, the smarter you can fight.

Build Your Party Your Way

Between fights, you can customize your team through the Trinket system. Each character can equip trinkets that unlock new abilities, passive bonuses, or utility effects, limited only by their Trinket Points. Want a glass cannon? Stack damage. Prefer a support build? Load up on buffs and healing.

You can also upgrade individual attacks using resources scattered throughout the world. These systems reward experimentation over min-maxing, letting you find builds that match your playstyle.

Every Book Tells a Different Story

Combat is only half the game. Escape from Ever After is structured around distinct storybook worlds, each with its own genre and atmosphere. One chapter might be a cozy fairytale forest under threat of corporate development. The next could dive into noir mystery or Lovecraftian horror.

Exploration pays off. Hidden items, optional quests, environmental puzzles, and side stories are tucked into every corner. And it all connects back to the Castle—formerly a fairytale landmark, now the headquarters of Ever After Inc.. It’s your hub between chapters, where you’ll meet recurring characters, take on side missions, manage upgrades, and watch the megacorp’s influence spread.

A Story About Fighting the System

Beneath the humor and absurdity, Escape from Ever After tells a story about what happens when someone realizes their entire world has been quietly rewritten by forces beyond their control. Flynt starts out confident in his role as a hero, only to discover that “hero” and “villain” don’t mean much when everyone’s just another cog in the machine.

To fight back, he’ll need to make uncomfortable alliances—including with Tinder herself. The game balances sharp satire with character-driven moments that land harder than you’d expect from a game about storybook characters stuck in corporate hell.

Worth Turning the Page

Escape from Ever After thrives on contrast. It’s storybook whimsy meets office dystopia, classic RPG mechanics meets modern design sensibilities, and lighthearted satire meets genuinely thoughtful storytelling.

We’ve spent years building this world, and every character, combat system, and storybook chapter was designed with one goal: giving players something worth discovering. Whether you’re here for the timing-based battles, the exploration, or just the absurd premise of fairytales stuck in corporate hell, we believe there’s definitely something in here for you.

Thanks for reading, and we can’t wait to see you jump into the chaos!

Escape from Ever After

HypeTrain Digital

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

$24.99

$19.99

Pre-order

Escape from Ever After is an adventure RPG inspired by the classic Paper Mario games, where fairytale and storybook characters must fight back against capitalism!

When Flynt Buckler, a classic fairytale adventurer, storms the castle of his evil dragon arch-nemesis Tinder, he finds the once intimidating fortress has been converted into… corporate offices? The villainous dragon is nowhere to be found and her castle is full of mindless coffee-sipping, report-filing drones. What happened?

It turns out that storybooks are an untapped market ripe with valuable resources, cheap labor, and profit to be had—so naturally, real-world conglomerate Ever After Inc. found a way to intervene! With Tinder’s Castle as their new corporate headquarters, Ever After Inc. is hellbent on taking over every storybook they can. With no choice but to get a job, Flynt Buckler must team up with his former nemesis Tinder in order to climb the corporate ladder and take down Ever After Inc. from the inside!

Dive into storybook worlds packed to the brim with colorful characters, captivating locales, and electrifying secrets! One moment you’ll be fleeing Lovecraftian terrors while solving a noir murder mystery, and the next you’ll be up against villainous versions of The Three Little Pigs as they try to bulldoze a fairytale forest for their real estate developments. The rules are always changing!

Face off against hordes of wacky enemies in snappy turn-based gameplay! Perfectly-timed action commands allow Flynt to finish off his foes with style, and an assortment of items, badges, and partners ensure there’s always a trick up his sleeve.

Fight in a fun, fast-paced battle system that rewards experimentation and strategy
Build and customize your party—every character has unique skills that can be equipped and upgraded throughout your journey
Engage in office banter, help your storybook coworkers, and decorate your office as you climb the corporate ladder
Explore vast storybook worlds brimming with sidequests, treasures, and secrets
Stories within stories: experience a charming and lively narrative where the rules are constantly changing
A jazzy, big-band soundtrack that keeps the energy pumping throughout