Deep breath. Clear mind. Deep breath. Clear mind. Deep breath. Clear mind.

This was Cliff Carlo’s mantra throughout my demo of Escape Dead Island. Poor Carlo, the game’s protagonist, has not been well ever since he washed up on a tropical, zombie-infested island in the Banoi archipelago. His entire reality is breaking down around him, to the point where Carlo and I are both having trouble separating fact from fiction. The result is a baffling narrative construct designed to keep you in orbit around a single, burning question: Is this real? The zombies are still a concern, sure, but the real battle in Escape Dead Island takes place inside your own mind.

Escape Dead Island joins publisher Deep Silver’s growing stable of Dead Island games, including

With all this talk of insanity and sneak-attacking zombies, I would be remiss not to mention one of my favorite aspects of the Escape Dead Island demo: photography. That’s right. Escape is taking a page from Dead Rising‘s book by letting you snap photos of your surroundings. These photos are one of the game’s many collectables and are explained away as collecting evidence against those who engineered this outbreak. You can put your own inner shutterbug to work when Escape Dead Island is released later this year on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and digitally on PC.