Escape from Colditz is a 1 vs many race game. The german guards have to keep the prisoners from escaping, and the prisoners have to try and sneak around, and collect the items they need to escape. The prisoners can work together, trading items, but there is only one winner.
It tends to be a slow burn, with the guards trying to position themselves early in the round, preparing for the inevitable escape attempt. Or, you can try and be super strict and perform heaps of searches early on, but that may limit your ability to stop the prisoners later.
One thing that may put a lot of Euro gamers off is the fact it is roll and move.
You roll two dice to move. Roll doubles, you can roll again and add it to your move. If your total is less than 5, you get to draw a card (usually gives you a special ability, such as ignore a search, or ignore some guard orders or something by causing a distraction). The cards are really powerful and more than compensate for a lack of movement. Before you can escape, you need to collect an escape kit (you start with one), and any other items you need in your escape (wire cutters, makeshift rope etc). The guard player obviously sees you collecting this, and can deduce where you might attempt to flee.
Once the escape happens though, it is very tense. Die rolls become exciting, and while people may not like the game being decided by good/bad rolls, thematically, it's pretty good. You're guy digs a tunnel under the kitchen, emerges near the fence, the guards start chasing him, trips, you cut the fence and run through but the other guard is coming from the other direction, so you double back and head for the vehicle. You get in with the keys you found and make a wild attempt to drive through the guard post, but a couple of metres through the post, the vehicle tire is shot and you crash in a ditch. All decided by dice rolls, but very exciting narrative.
