While puzzle games are common, the entire title frame around escape rooms is not. Sure, there have been escape room games like The Room over the years, but as far as I know, there hasn’t been an escape room type experience like Coin Crew Games’ Escape Academy. You can see that the title literally gives players a bunch of individual escape rooms to beat, and ties it into a storyline that’s far more far-fetched than reality. But that doesn’t change the fact that puzzles and rooms are pretty fascinating problems in themselves, and I know that because I’ve been playing with it lately.
But before I dive into the mechanics and the problems you have to solve, let me run the story briefly. The idea is that you are scouted to join the elusive escape academy, where you are taught by various instructors to be one of the best escapers of all time. The concept is hands-on learning, so you have to beat escape rooms to earn badges (similar to those in Pokémon) and prove your skill and talent at puzzle solving, which is pretty much the entire narrative around for what it’s worth of. I’m saying this because there’s also a conspiracy and all sorts of really weird scenes that unravel that, frankly, feel downright ridiculous at times. But then again, people don’t come to an escape room game for its story, so hoping that the narrative will be its strongest point is clearly a misguided expectation.
Fortunately, the puzzle solving (which is the meat of the game) is of a much higher quality. Each room has its own theme and end goal, whether it’s to defuse a bomb or cure yourself of poisoning, it’s your responsibility to crack a variety of smaller problems in order to be able to best achieve the end goal. These smaller problems are where the developer’s skills really shine, as you can go from having to solve sudoku to get the right vending machine order, to having to determine the different unnamed pots by combining them and seeing the responses they give off. Chemical composition of gas.
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I would say that from my experience with Escape Academy, the puzzles and questions aren’t particularly confusing, instead, you should be able to solve whatever is in front of you by staying calm and sticking to common sense. Generally speaking, whenever you’re stuck and can’t figure out a puzzle, the answer is staring at you in the face, and in that sense, it’s a pretty easy game.
In fact, I’d go a step further and say that the puzzles are often a little too easy, and the challenge really lacks progression as the game progresses. Of course, each room has a time limit to keep you on your toes, but from what I’ve encountered, it’s not a tight time frame and you’ll never run out of time for a level. Assuming you do find yourself a bit lost on a puzzle, however, there is a hint system that pretty much provides answers to the questions you face, and as far as I know, using or even abusing this system has no real repercussions – so feel free to hint you will.
However, you’ll need to keep some writing material nearby (I used post-it notes) while playing, as some solutions require memorizing codes or jotting things down in order to get the right solution in the end. If you don’t, you’re just making your life more difficult, and when you’re in a race against time and have a fairly long list of questions in a level, the added challenge doesn’t do much to improve the gameplay experience.
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But I’ll say that while Escape Academy didn’t really leave me scratching my head for solutions to the many problems it offered, I was thoroughly entertained. Considering the full story is about 4-6 hours, it’s entirely possible to do this game in one go, as the variety of puzzles and levels is so extensive that you don’t really feel like you’re repeating yourself or in game design Faced with too many similarities. Of course, this does mean that Escape Academy has some challenges in terms of replayability, because once you’ve solved a puzzle and completed a level, there’s no reason to go back and solve it again, so if you decide to repeat a level, Don’t expect to find new problems.
While it has its flaws, Escape Academy is designed in such a way that mechanical skills are replaced by cognitive skills, which does mean that the title should be more accessible to a wider range of players. I mean, the cleaner, generally less demanding levels and puzzles should mean this game is great for anyone not too proficient at playing video games, just as good for a co-op experience. For this reason, I applaud Coin Crew Games for the way Escape Academy was designed.
Wouldn’t it be better if there were more rooms and puzzles to conquer though? absolute. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a narrative that really felt the least appealing? Yes. Also, does it hurt that there are challenges or extra goals that make it worth going back and replaying previous levels? no doubt. Hence why Escape Academy has its flaws. But if you’re looking for a game to conquer at night, or for an engaging form of co-op, this indie puzzler won’t have much of a problem.
