Prison Princess: Trapped Allure Review – A Fantasy Escape Room With Charming Flaws (2024)

Overview of Prison Princess: Trapped Allure

Well, time flies, doesn’t it? It seems like just yesterday that I was roaming through the Demon’s Castle to rescue a pair of captured princesses in a quest filled with intriguing puzzles. Since then, developer Qureate has been a constant in my life for serving mid-level fan service adventures. Now, four years after its predecessor, the hero is back—out of his body, that is—and must once again save the princesses from captivity in Prison Princess: Trapped Allure.

Story and Characters – Fantasy Tropes and Missed Opportunities

Prison Princess: Trapped Allure opens with the hero remembering the events that took place right after the conclusion of the first game. Still, with the inclusion of several new characters and a new lead, Julietta, I would say this game can be enjoyed without ever having to play the first entry. Trapped Allure does a much better job of handling the characters, but there’s just not enough here to actually care about any of them. Trust me, after an hour or two, you’ll be quickly skipping through the narrative bits with the goal of simply completing the game to see what’s at the end of it all.

That said, if you stick around and actually read it, you’ll learn more about the hero and his companions as they each fall into some classic fantasy trope. While Aria and Zeta also join the search party, other members of their group have been captured by the Demon King, and you’ll need to save each of them as you make your way through the castle. This adds some additional story bits, but sadly, the conversations with each of these girls become a repeating line after a few interactions. There’s just not enough depth in these characters, but at least they’re all illustrated well and show the developer knows their audience.

Gameplay and Puzzles – Simple Challenges with Ambiguous Design

To get through the castle, you need to scan each room to look for clues, puzzles, and items that can help you progress. There’s a limited special ability that allows you to see things on the screen to interact with, but this isn’t helpful at all and only highlights objects in red on your current screen. The weird thing is that there’s a very long timer for this ability, but you can’t scan the entire room, so why even have the timer? Anyway, the puzzles from beginning to end are exceptionally straightforward, and you’ll rarely, if ever, get stumped on figuring out a solution.

The only difficulty comes from trying to guess what order some events need to go in or where to place specific items. For instance, I was stuck for about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to use the hose to shrink this mage girl. I thought I tried everything but was forced to ask for help from someone else playing. Well, it turns out I just had to click her mouth. Why not just click the hose? Why not tell me in a line, “Maybe we should try to stick the hose in her mouth.” This game has many annoying elements that all stem from simply withholding information from the player if only to pad the runtime.

Thankfully, getting lost isn’t so bad since you can find hidden skits throughout the castle that increase your affinity with the girls. Still, those skits won’t alleviate the frustration of things like knowing that the wreath in the attic was never used for anything throughout the entire game until a very specific puzzle is triggered, but before then, interacting with it did nothing. It’s just strange things like this that turn a relatively simple puzzle game into a pixel hunt quest where you must continually travel throughout the castle, re-investigating every scene every time you hit a roadblock.

There are some systems in place to make some things easier, such as being able to hot-key a memo that holds a tip for the puzzle. I recommend that instead of allowing the player to equip a memo, the developers should have the memo tied to the puzzle automatically show up. If you don’t have it, it says something like “Memo is missing,” which tells the player there’s a hint for the particular puzzle around. Further, you can quickly move throughout the castle rooms through a fast travel system, and you can also turn on an option that removes some of the more adult content in the game to be less revealing.

Visuals and Presentation – Catering to Anime Enthusiasts

So why play Prison Princess: Trapped Allure? The game is quite enjoyable if you’re trying to hang out with anime girls for an afternoon of brain teasers. There are some clever elements here and there, but it doesn’t do any more than it needs to. You can see where the quality was cut as some puzzle designs come off as lazy, while others have strange trial-and-error setups that halt progression. I know this is meant to be an escape room-type game, but the puzzles are way too easy to recommend to hardcore fans of escape rooms. Still, the illustrations and interactive scenes are what you’re likely here for, and in that sense, this game is a quality purchase.

Final Thoughts – Is Trapped Allure Worth Playing?

I would love to say that I played Prison Princess: Trapped Allure to be ironic, but in all honesty, I enjoy these kinds of silly games. There’s no pressure to do anything, and the reward awaiting players in each room—highlighting a new fantasy girl and puzzles—is an enjoyable game loop that held my interest. However, the needlessly ambiguous puzzle designs that are simple yet require overly specific actions don’t do this experience any favors. Further, the story doesn’t land, even with the additional cast to round out the party. What this is is a baka game for bakas, and I happen to be one of them.