While puzzle games are fairly common, full-fledged escape room titles are less so. Sure, there have been games like The Room, but as far as I can remember there hasn’t been an escape room experience like the one proposed by Coin Crew Games’ Escape Academy. This title offers players a large number of individual escape rooms to overcome, related to each other through a plot that is more crazy than realistic. But the truth is that the puzzles and the rooms present exciting challenges to overcome and I know this because I’ve played in each of them.
But before we get into the mechanics of the game and all the problems you have to solve, let me give you a brief history summary: you have been chosen to join the peculiar Escape Academy, a school where your teachers will teach you everything you need to become one of the greatest escapists of all time. You’ll learn through practice, so you’ll have to overcome various escape rooms to get badges (like Pokémon’s) and show off your skills and cunning by solving puzzles, and for what it’s worth, this is more or less based on what makes up the entire narrative. I say that because there’s also a conspiracy and some slightly weird scenarios for you to figure out that don’t make much sense to me, in my opinion. But you come into an escape room for other things than your narrative, so it’s best not to come with very high expectations at this point.
Luckily, solving puzzles (which is the basis of the game) takes him to an excellent level. Each room has its own theme and objective, be it defusing a bomb or curing poison. It’s up to you to decipher a series of small obstacles to reach this ultimate goal. These obstacles required the developers to show off their skills as you can go from solving a sudoku to unlocking the vending machine, to combining different containers to see what reaction they give off and discovering the chemical composition of the gasoline. .
Based on my experience in Escape Academy, I have to admit that neither the puzzles nor the obstacles are particularly complex, you just need to keep a cool head and use common sense to overcome them. Generally, when you find yourself at a dead end struggling to solve the puzzle, the answer is literally right in front of your eyes. In that sense, the game is quite simple.
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Also, I would go so far as to say that the puzzles can be too easy and it’s not that the difficulty increases as you progress. Yes, there is a limited time to beat each room, but it is very difficult to lose. Are you a bit lost in a riddle? There’s a hint system that will guide you without penalty, so don’t hesitate to use it whenever you need it.
In many situations you need to have something handy to write (I used sticky notes) as some solutions require you to memorize code or write things down to get to the correct solution in the end. If you don’t, you’ll complicate your life and you’ll find that when the timer runs out you’ll have to solve a long list of problems in order to escape (an extra challenge that turns into a challenge that doesn’t kill much to improve the gaming experience) ).
What I want to say is that while Escape Academy didn’t make me rack my brains excessively looking for solutions to numerous problems, it was very entertaining. If we estimate the length of the story to be around 4-6 hours, it would be more than enough to complete the game in one go, since the variety of puzzles and levels is so great that you won’t get bored. Obviously, Escape Academy faces a small problem with replayability, because once you’ve solved all the puzzles and mastered the different levels, there’s no reason to want to repeat everything again, so don’t expect to face new challenges if you decide to repeat a level.
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While it has its flaws, Escape Academy was designed to replace mechanical abilities with cognitive abilities, meaning this title is accessible to a wider range of players. By that I mean that the shorter and generally less challenging levels and puzzles should make this game ideal for everyone, even the newest games, and would also lend itself well to a co-op experience. . So I congratulate Coin Crew Games on the way they designed Escape Academy.
Would it have been great to have more puzzles and rooms? Of course. Would it have been great to have a story that grabs us? Yes, would it have improved the experience if additional challenges or objectives were added to make earlier levels worth replaying? Without doubt. Hence, we commented that Escape Academy has its flaws. But if you’re looking for a game to while away the afternoon or to try out cooperative play, this indie puzzler is a great option.
