Escape Academy Review
Escape Academy
Publisher: Skybound
Developer: Coin Crew
Genre:
PEGI: E
Comments:
If you love the experience of solving riddles, puzzles, or an escape room; but really dislike people, moving around, and potentially getting sweaty, then Escape Academy might be just your kind of game.
The narrative for Escape Academy is a little tough to follow and honestly one of the only detractors of this game. You start off in a simple enough escape room in a run down building but somehow fall down a great rabbit hole of enrolling in an academy focused on escapism. Developing future hackers, escape artists, spies and the like. Its really bizarre, but the reason we are here anyway is for the escape rooms.
The entire game is played from a first-person perspective of course and you are tasked with solving over a dozen different escape room experiences that range from the bizarre to even deadly.
You are able to interact with numerous things in each stage and pick up items that are important to solving your puzzles, there is a handy pin guide as well that allows you to keep an item out and viewable while you solve the room if needed, which comes in handy a few times to remember passwords or ciphers. You definitely should keep some scrap paper and a pen handy to take notes on your attempts.
Many levels have a time objective as well and each level gives you a grade (you are in school after all) that is based on how quickly you solve and how many hints you have to use to complete.
The first couple stages to me were extremely easy but the difficulty ramps up throughout the game with the final stage being a real headscratcher for me. You can play the entire game solo or you can co-op it with a split screen to give you a real escape room feel to it.
The visuals are pretty basic and definitely are going for a stylized look, but don’t expect this game to be a great looker, that’s not what the focus is anyway. There is minor voice acting and the music is rather muted and just kind of serves as a backdrop so you can focus on the puzzles at hand.
Putting the story aside this was some of the most fun I’ve had with a game this year, it is truly something unique that we don’t get to see very often in gaming.
While the game ends after your first year in Escape Academy it leaves it open for DLC or a sequel down the road for sure, which I hope they take a crack at. The entire game can be beaten in a few hours if you are good enough and can make for a great game night with friends for sure. Best of all if you have GamePass, then you already have access to this little hidden gem!
Trailer
Article By Kevin Austin
Kevin Austin has been in gaming journalism in one way or another since the launch of the Nintendo Gamecube. Married and father of 3 children he has been gaming since the ripe age of 6 when he got his first NES system and over 30 years later he is still gaming almost daily. Kevin is also co-founder of the Play Some Video Games (PSVG) Podcast network which was founded over five years ago and is still going strong. Some of his favorite gaming series includes Fallout and Far Cry, he is a sucker for single player adventure games (hence his big reviews for Playstation), and can frequently be found getting down in one battle royale or another. If it's an oddball game, odds are he's all about it.
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