I've always had a bit of a penchant for escape room puzzle games, from my early days of playing Flash games like Cube Escape and Samsara Room to more recent times where I'd pick up and run through installments of The Room in a day, so I'm not surprised that Escape Academy hit the right notes for me. The game plays out like a simplified Portal-like with an inventory; you can cycle through clickables pretty quickly, since the game conveniently highlights exactly what's considered "notable" and fluff objects that just provide a quick text description don't take long to read or unload the description. There's no note taking system built into the game; a little inconvenient, but I'm used to taking notes outside of the game as is, so it didn't detract too much from my experience. For the most part, the puzzles aren't too complicated and boil down to simple visual recognition or basic math problems, and the hint system only needs to point you in the right direction of the necessary interactions to keep you moving forward. Fortunately, the game strikes a pretty solid balance between being just difficult enough to force you to pay attention and easy enough to tool out with just a pencil and paper, and the always visible timer keeps you on your toes but always provides enough leeway, and definitely adds to the satisfaction felt once you finally break through.

What really stood out to me in Escape Academy were the slight wrinkles added to the basic puzzle system + mechanics to shake things up. One level plays out almost like a session of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, where you act as an "active observer" and have to monitor the situation while figuring out crucial tidbits of information on your end, then relay instructions to your allies with your gleaned discoveries. Another level originally has a pretty short timer, but it's actually a segmented escape room where you have to stay ahead of a visibly rising water level, adding on additional time as you make your way up past the obstacles. And then there are the more open levels in Escape Academy, where instead of necessarily just opening doors to "escape," you're performing some timed task like trying to break into a fenced garden to leave your mark on history, or defusing a bomb in the Quad by breaking into trucks for keys and tools, or changing a simple task of opening a locked serving dish for a milkshake into a mad scramble to find ingredients for an antidote while your vision's tinted purple because someone's hijacked the milkshake. Experimenting with the timer and objectives in simple yet thought-out ways really kept me on my toes and helped to make each puzzle level stand out as more than just a contribution to the sum of a product.

There aren't really many glaring complaints here from me; it's more so that I think certain aspects were a bit generic and while inoffensive, could have been improved slightly for a more ambitious experience. There's not much variety to the soundtracks, and I think changing the soundtracks inbetween levels as you progress to reflect the change in moods or an increase in tension would have really intensified the thrill of it all. The story is admittingly a bit simple (you'll see the "twist" coming from a mile away) and there's not much development to the main characters or deep worldbuilding to be had; fortunately, I believe the devs do plan on making a chapter 2, so they've got time to build upon their foundation. And finally, the game's performance could be optimized a bit more; running the game turned my PC into an oven and I still encountered noticeable dips under 60 FPS in singleplayer. Regardless, this was a nice diversion from the more standout titles I've been playing recently, and while I do lament that I wasn't able to find anyone to play this with online, the singleplayer experience was fruitful enough to where I will be eagerly awaiting news regarding the sequel.