Escape Academy is a fun puzzler that’s better together

destructoid.com:

A few weeks ago, indie puzzler Escape Academy went live. It’s a new addition to a growing collection of escape room-styled puzzle games, and it’s a genuinely good time. It is a bit better if you bring a friend along for the ride, though.

I had originally planned to play through Escape Academy with a friend. Last year’s Operation: Tango or even games like A Way Out made co-op mandatory, and I found that doing puzzles together is a fun way to build teamwork. While, y’know, also competing and finding out bizarre things about each other.

So Escape Academy seemed like a perfect new game to co-op together. Life circumstances arose though, and while we managed to play some of the earliest levels together, I wound up having to solo the latter batch of puzzle rooms.

To be clear: Escape Academy is completely playable in solo or co-op. As a new student at the titular Escape Academy, you undertake a curriculum designed to enhance your abilities to escape increasingly dangerous situations. This includes finding the antidote for a poison, climbing a tower that’s filling with water, and yes, a ticking time-bomb.

It’s all played in a wacky school-life setting, and it works well enough. The story is a good enough draw to keep a through-line between each of the escape rooms, and it sometimes allows for clever moments in rooms or fun character asides.

The crux of the Escape Academy is the escaping, though. And the escaping is pretty good.

Developer Coin Crew Games has talent spanning arcade, immersive, and VR games, which makes sense when you play Escape Academy. There’s a good physicality to these rooms, a sense of place and purpose to each item. Puzzles feel segmented but part of a larger whole, like you’re gradually unlocking the