Escape rooms are a gimmick. You’re not actually being held against your will by some kind of Willy Wonka-esque Bond villain; you’re paying to pretend to be locked in a room with your friends, to scratch your head over puzzles and enjoy the scramble and inherent silliness of trying to find a way out. “Escape Academy” understands this — and embraces it wholeheartedly. It’s a fun co-op experience that accurately captures both the frustration and giddy satisfaction of real-life escape rooms, and with a runtime of four or five hours, it manages not to overstay its welcome.
You begin the game in what appears to be a normal (if pretty janky) escape room that’s revealed to be a covert front for the Escape Academy, a school where students train to become masters of escape room puzzles. As its newest recruit, you work to earn badges by breaking out of the school’s escape rooms, securing your freedom and — more often than not — your continued survival. The faculty is fiercely committed to cultivating its students’ skill sets, and burning buildings and ticking time bombs are compelling motivators.
Just like in real escape rooms, you’ll comb through the play area looking for clues and using what you find to solve puzzles. Each stage involves a series of interlocking puzzles; maybe you notice some kind of cipher on the wall, but the key to decoding it is behind a locked door, and so on and so forth. Whenever you successfully crack a puzzle, a satisfying synthy jingle plays to indicate you’re on the right track.
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