ALT Lab · 2023
Breakout 13
An interactive film about a teenager sent to an internet-addiction correctional institute — based on true stories China's own press brought to light.
Breakout 13 is the auteur shock of the Chinese interactive film wave: a live-action drama about a teenager committed to an internet-addiction “correction” institute, drawn from documented true stories. The institutions it depicts were exposed by Chinese investigative journalists, publicly condemned, and shut down — the game turns that reckoning into one of the most unsettling institutional dramas in the medium, closer to A Clockwork Orange or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest than to anything else in games.
Selected for Cannes Next 2023 and a double winner at the NYX Game Awards (Best Narrative, Best Storytelling), it earned a “Very Positive” rating on Steam. On iPhone it’s published as Break 13 Out: the first five chapters are free, with a single unlock for the full story.
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