The game takes place during the chaos of a robot invasion in a partially destroyed city. No further backstory is provided. The player takes control of a human inhabitant who is trying to escape this mess.

Escape Jail starts with the main character jumping over a few obstacles and out of an office window, landing softly in a parkour-esque move. After that, he just keeps running from left to right, jumping over the gaps between the rooftops. The player's control is limited to just one button: Jump. By holding the button instead of tapping it, you can jump higher. To make things even harder, the character keeps getting faster until he reaches his maximum momentum, making it harder to jump on time. On the other hand, this makes longer jumps easier to perform.

Falling to death is not the only challenge for the player. On his way, he has to deal with obstacles that slow him down, like office chairs and boxes, making long jumps impossible. Other things to deal with are screen-shaking flying robots and occasionally dropped bombs. The game features randomly generated levels, making every run a new experience.

Graphically, Escape Jail is as minimalistic as its gameplay, using only a limited greyscale palette. The pixel art, the animations of the character, crashing windows, white doves flying away as the player rushes by and aliens destroying the city in the background imagery are where this game visually shines.