13 Days to Escape Prison Routine: What Happens Each Day and What You Must Do

A normal day in 13 Days to Escape is a timetable of alerts, with jobs as the dependable cash routes. You wake in your cell, the day rolls through announced periods — ROLL CALL, LUNCH, YARD TIME, RECREATION TIME — until RETURN TO CELLS starts a countdown back to your cell and LOCKDOWN locks the door. The one requirement your HUD always displays is "Don't get suspicious". Everything else — sorting library books, peeling potatoes, browsing OJ's Deals — is daytime work that turns routine time into cash and escape tools.

Quick answer

A normal prison day runs on scheduled alerts: ROLL CALL, LUNCH, YARD TIME and RECREATION TIME, then a RETURN TO CELLS countdown that ends in LOCKDOWN with your cell door locked.

• Whether any specific job is compulsory is not established. Jobs are the dependable cash routes: library books pay 10 cash each, litter pickup pays 20 cash, potato peeling pays per completed set.
• The standing rule is Don't get suspicious — the objective panel always leads with it, and the developer's advice is to stay ready for roll call and avoid guards and CCTV.
• The recorded run's clear timed pressure was the RETURN TO CELLS countdown; whether the other alerts carry obligations is not established. After it ends, LOCKDOWN locks the cell door.
• The objective panel hands you your current escape task, such as Buy a screwdriver from OJ, so the game itself tells you what to do next.

Act normal by day, plan your escape by night

The developer's description frames the whole routine in one line: "Act normal by day. Plan your escape by night." Prisoners are expected to stay ready for roll call, avoid guards and CCTV, keep suspicion low, work prison jobs, earn cash, and buy tools from OJ's Deals. In practice that makes the daytime periods your working hours — jobs, shopping and quiet preparation — while the locked-down night belongs to the plan itself. The day/night cycle guide breaks that loop down further.

How the day is scheduled

Two HUD elements tell you where you are in the day. The top-centre counter shows the day number, the current room or period, and a clock — for example DAY 01 LIBRARY 01:42 while the book job was underway, or DAY 01 LOCKDOWN 03:11 late in the evening. And each period opens with an in-game alert.

The periods observed across a recorded run were ROLL CALL, LUNCH, YARD TIME, RECREATION TIME, RETURN TO CELLS and LOCKDOWN, and Day 1 followed exactly that order. Day 2 restarted the same rhythm — wake up, ROLL CALL, library books — so the routine repeats from one day to the next.

How the cycle works

1. 01

   ROLL CALL

   The cell door opens and the day begins. In the recorded run this period was filled with the library book-sorting job.

2. 02

   LUNCH

   Cafeteria time. The potato station offers Peel potatoes 5/5 — a drag-gesture job that pays per completed set.

3. 03

   YARD TIME

   Access to the yard. Picking up litter (Pick up litter 8/8) pays 20 cash, and OJ takes orders for tools at his cell 13 shop.

4. 04

   RECREATION TIME

   Another free period. The recorded run used it for a return trip to OJ, buying the 25-cash Screwdriver.

5. 05

   RETURN TO CELLS

   A countdown to get back inside. It doubles as a final prep window — the recorded player sawed the cell's window bars during it.

6. 06

   LOCKDOWN

   The cell door locks. With the bars already removed, the recorded player climbed out the window and kept working on the escape.

After LOCKDOWN the counter rolls over to the next day, and the wake-up, ROLL CALL and job routine starts again.

The daytime work: jobs, bounties and loose cash

Three scheduled jobs showed up in the run, each tied to a period:

The library job is the clearest loop. The guard at the desk lists requested book numbers — the recorded ones were #106, #032 and #140 — you find each numbered book on the shelves, press E to pick it up, and deliver it back to the desk for 10 cash a book. New numbers appear on later days (Day 2 asked for #043 and similar), and the jobs themselves repeat: another lunchtime round of peeling on Day 2 saw the cash counter reach 187.

Not every cash source is on the timetable. A KILL bounty pop-up worth 35 cash, with its own countdown, can appear near an inmate, and the dropped cash can be looted afterwards. Cash stacks also lie around the prison — the recorded player collected stacks left on other inmates' beds in the cell block. For more on earning, see the money guide, and the prison jobs page goes deeper on the jobs themselves.

OJ's Deals: turning cash into tools

OJ is the orange-jumpsuit NPC at cell 13, marked by the cash bubble over his head — he's already standing nearby in the cell block when you wake up on Day 1. During YARD TIME and RECREATION TIME you can press E on him to browse OJ's DEALS and buy tools: the recorded run picked up a Saw for 110 cash and a Screwdriver for 25 cash. One practical note — purchases require enough cash on you. A lunchtime attempt to buy on Day 2 failed simply because the player came up short.

That's the routine's economic point: daytime jobs and looting fund the purchases your objective panel asks for. The OJ's Deals shop page and the tools guide go deeper on both sides of that trade.

The curfew: RETURN TO CELLS and LOCKDOWN

The day's hard edge comes in the evening. A RETURN TO CELLS alert starts a countdown to reach your cell, and once it ends, LOCKDOWN locks the cell door. That curfew is what bounds your free movement each day: the stretch between morning roll call and the countdown is the natural window for jobs, shopping and escape preparation.

The recorded run shows how that countdown window gets used. Back in the cell before it expired, the player sawed the window bars — a "Saw bars" progress bar — and removed them just before the door locked for LOCKDOWN. During LOCKDOWN itself they slipped out through the window toward the escape route. How those tools and openings become an actual breakout is the escape plan's subject, and the full walkthrough follows the whole run from day one.

What you must actually do

Strictly speaking, less than the busy schedule suggests:

• Beat the curfew. The recorded run's clear timed pressure was the RETURN TO CELLS countdown; whether the other alerts carry obligations is not established. Be back before it ends, because the cell door locks when LOCKDOWN starts.
• Keep suspicion low. The objective panel in the top right always leads with "Don't get suspicious", backed by a suspicion meter at the bottom centre of the screen — it was observed sitting at values like 15%, 23% and 31% across Days 1–2. The developer's advice for this is to stay ready for roll call and avoid guards and CCTV. The suspicion guide and stealth guide cover the details.
• Follow the objective panel's current task. It is the game telling you what to do next — the recorded chain ran Buy a screwdriver from OJ, then Unscrew the toilet, then Make your escape. (Where unscrewing the toilet leads is the move-the-toilet guide's territory.)
• Earn cash however suits you. Whether any specific job is compulsory is not established. The scheduled jobs are simply the dependable income, with bounties and looting as supplements — and cash is what the objective tasks actually require, whether that's a 25-cash Screwdriver or a 110-cash Saw.

Do those four things each day and the routine does the rest: every period hands you time to earn, shop or prepare, and lockdown gives the escape plan its turn.