Escape Academy brings the escape room to your living room

digitaltrends.com:

During the height of the pandemic, absence truly made the heart grow fonder. I found myself missing social activities that I barely ever did before lockdown. For instance, despite only ever doing an escape room once or twice in my life, I suddenly wished I could get some friends together to go out and yell at each other as we fail to solve puzzles.

Escape Academy, the first game from Iam8bit’s new publishing arm, looks to recreate that experience in digital space. The first-person puzzle game drops players in a series of escape rooms that they’ll need to solve as a timer ticks down. From finding hidden items to decoding cryptic clues, those who love being locked in a room will find plenty to do.

I played my way to two of the game’s rooms (there are over a dozen in total) and was immediately eager to try more. Intuitive puzzles, a helpful hint system, and some delightful wackiness make Escape Academy feel like the perfect escape room experience for players of all ages.

As its name implies, Escape Academy has a school motif. Each escape room is a different exam and players get a report card at the end highlighting how they did, complete with a letter grade. The developers at Coin Crew Games hint that there’s a narrative that runs through the game, but my demo was focused on the puzzles.

The first room I tried was one of the game’s earliest. With 15 minutes on the clock, I was thrown into a wide office filled with bookshelves, potted plants, and degrees plastering the wall. A deck at the back of the room set up the room’s end puzzle, implying that I needed to figure out someone’s name to exit. Sure enough, I found a computer hooked up to the exit, which would allow me to enter a first, middle, and last name. I’d just have