„Orientation is like a scene from Indiana Jones” My time with the Escape Academy 2's Summer Game Fest demo

Sitting down for my demo of Day of the Devs showcase, but I hadn’t heard of the game or played the original. But then the ceiling threatened to fall on top of me, and I only had fifteen minutes to solve an array of puzzles to escape my classroom, or be crushed, presumably. It's still a school, after all. If that’s not enough of a hint, I made it out of the classroom with under four minutes to spare and had been hooked on the game’s premise long before that.

Escape Academy 2 is some of the best first-person puzzle gameplay in a long time

Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School, to use its full title, was designed by actual escape room designers. According to my demo guide, the team was working on in-person escape rooms, then in 2020, as the world locked down, they decided to continue their work digitally. The original Escape Academy was released in 2022 and has received glowing reviews from fans. The sequel plans to take the experience to the next level.

Nothing is what it seems in this odd school. Orientation is like a scene from Indiana Jones. Buying textbooks requires cash, but you’ll also have to figure out how to unlock the cases they are stored in. Every little detail feels like it could be relevant to something, so it’s worth taking a look. In the same five minutes, Escape Academy 2 can make me feel like a genius and an idiot, and I love it both ways. The first puzzle after escaping the orientation room is finding your locker, and I hesitate to call it a puzzle; I just thought it was far more complex than it ultimately turned out to be. Portraits of the students are hung on the wall, keyed to locker numbers. I must have spent five minutes wandering the hallways looking for clues about who I was, only to realize that if I went into the bathroom, I could look into the mirror.

When this game is eventually released, I highly recommend having a pen and paper nearby. This won’t get as complex and overwhelming as something like Blue Prince, but it’s helpful to words, letters, and codes without having to stop what you’re doing and look back at something in-game. The demo at Summer Game Fest was nice enough to have some pen and paper prepared for me, and when it was done, I was able to pin it to a corkboard of all the other messy notes people had taken throughout Summer Game Fest.

I had only expected to have half an hour to play Escape Academy 2, but since it was later in the day and there were no other appointments scheduled after me, I was able to play for about an hour. By the end of it, my forehead was probably red from all the times I smacked my hand there. Not just from when I realized a solution I had missed, but when the NPCs spoke in some of the wildest puns I had ever heard before.

Of course, I was laughing, but it was hard to tell if it was genuinely funny or just laughing at how painful the puns were. Either way, I get the sense that the writing team will be happy to hear that. Unlike some other games I demoed at Summer Game Fest, I think I talked to every NPC I came across. Maybe I’m a masochist, but part of me had to see every line of dialogue. Some NPCs did provide hints or unlock side quests/side puzzles, but that’s not really why I did it.

Related:Stuck on “Small green tree-like vegetable” in Cookie Jam? Here’s what you’ve been looking for

I didn’t try this myself, but apparently, Escape Academy 2 will have split-screen co-op, just like the first game. Some of the challenges were difficult enough when there was just me to mess things up. But I look forward to having a friend as an easy excuse to point to when it takes too long to solve a puzzle.

In Escape Academy 2, the answer will usually be clever, but not as complex as you sometimes think it will be. The game has a ridiculous sense of humor and will always have you second-guessing yourself. But there’s still nothing more satisfying than solving a good puzzle. Escape Academy 2 has captured that feeling all over its expansive 3D campus. For now, we will have to wait to learn more about this sequel. I am crossing my fingers for a demo sometime soon or a release date early next year, so that I can finally return and earn enough credits to complete my degree.

Thanks to Coin Crew Games and iam8bit for the opportunity to try the Escape Academy 2 demo at Summer Game Fest. I hope my detailed notes are framed somewhere in someone’s office, or at least still on the corkboard. Escape Academy 2 will be available on Steam and the Epic Games Store, so you can wishlist it on both to show your for these talented indie developers.

Escape Academy

July 14, 2022

Rate It!

• Overview

• puzzle games
• indie games
• puzzles
• Summer Game Fest
• PC
• PS4
• XONE
• Switch
• PS5
• XSX