PvP in Escape Academy? It's a better fit than you think

gamedeveloper.com:

Coin Crew Games released its first game back in July 2022: Escape Academy. It’s a puzzle game where players must solve escape room activities within a certain time limit. The story follows a young student and their journey through a school where the best escape artists hone their craft.

Escape Academy received positive reviews and released its first DLC in November 2022 titled, Escape from Anti-Escape Island, where the player’s relaxing summer vacation turns into a frantic game of escape. The game’s upcoming DLC, Escape from the Past, launches on June 19, and it takes place several decades before the events of Escape Academy.

The game has one more expansion called Tournament of Puzzles which is set to release this Fall. It’s a player vs. player (PvP) game mode where players must compete to see who can solve a succession of randomly generated escape rooms the fastest.

Coin Crew Games co-founders Wyatt Bushnell and Mike Mohammed Salyh sat down with Game Developer to discuss the development of Tournament of Puzzles.

Since Escape Academy’s launch, the biggest piece of feedback from fans is that they simply wanted more content. With the game’s Season Pass, players get both paid expansions, which are essentially double the content of the base game. However, the Tournament of Puzzles DLC will be entirely free.

Salyh said that making replayable content was something that the studio wanted to do, but it was also a response to fan feedback. Fixed escape rooms can only be played once, and once players know the solution, the rooms aren’t really playable anymore.

The development team started prototyping different ideas, starting with more traditional single-player or co-op experiences. However, they made a "versus mode" and that’s what