The player controls Torque, a man who has been sent to the fictional Abbott State Penitentiary on Carnate Island, Maryland. Torque has been convicted and sentenced to death for murdering his wife and two children, although he claims to have blacked out at the time this happened and cannot remember anything. The night Torque arrives, there is a powerful earthquake, which releases an army of monsters upon the facility. Torque’s cell door breaks and he is freed from his captivity. Starting with little more than a shiv, Torque traverses the prison in an attempt to escape Carnate Island alive.