I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but I do like to escape a room - so I thought, why not give a go at escaping an academy hey?
Escape Room games are a lot more common, so if one would like to set itself apart from the pack and not simply be another “cheap indie” they need new ideas, good themes and a little bit of something else.
Escape Academy takes the route of creating a story where the escapes are lessons and they are in a connected story with characters representing your rival, teaching staff and more.
It’s not a bad idea but it is one that did not connect with me at all.
The characters are by no means bad, neither is the writing, but I quickly found myself skipping more than I was reading. I don’t think this reflects well on me but I also don’t want it to reflect negatively on the game. It just feels like a lot of writing and character art I’ve seen already, a style my brain seems to only now associate with “a younger generation”.
It’s a nice art style that has beautiful, soft looking characters but for me there’s no charm, no excitement, I am not gripped and I certainly won’t remember any of their names in a week’s time.
Again, the idea is not bad and whilst the presentation and writing may have felt extremely run of the mill, how the escapes tie together and are varied is a much bigger success in every way. It has what one of these games needs to stand out; diversity, strong themes and well executed ideas.
Not every room is simply “find a key”, one involves multiple tiers as the building is flooding, another has you watching monitors - giving and receiving feedback in a way that is quite akin to “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” with you doing most of the work.
If there is one thing to write home about, it is that mixture of styles and great themes.
Crucially though, do they contain good thought provoking, head scratching puzzles? Sometimes.
For the most part I would say the puzzles are good, very early on you start to get a feel of what puzzle types the devs like and the structures they go for. Many of you will be happy to hear there’s not much maths, which my brain (always interpreting number hints in that way) caught me out when a picture of six letter D’s simply was meant to represent sixty rather than D possibly representing 4 as the 4th letter.
Once you learn the language of these puzzles none are frustrating but you will take a moment to figure what it wants and like a real escape room, you’ll spend another good amount of time trying to figure out where it’s relevant or how you can get what it needs.
This is where one issue arose for me, and that there are a lot of assets which were interactable were not clear enough. Even more confusing is that for example a box you can open may be identical to background junk which you can’t, meaning you waste your time looking and clicking at essentially nothing.
This along with some stages which felt far longer or more open than they needed to be would eat at time limits that are otherwise very well judged (although I mostly got A+’s so maybe too lenient?).
I understand that different settings have varying open spaces but I feel an escape room should be somewhat confined and the eureka moments should be from figuring puzzles more often than scouring for an important item.
Finally while I speak on some not game-breaking but minor problems. The controls, while fine, did not feel refined. The game is first person and works as you’d expect but I would hope when focusing on a grid or something such as a keypad that I would be able to click along it, not move a cursor, to me that’s less intuitive and also not as realistic or satisfying a feeling - sure you can fat thumb keys on a keyboard in real life but I also tend to feel my hands are controlled at the hands and not like something in a crane game.
If it wasn’t clear I did enjoy my time with Escape Academy and overall would recommend it to anyone who does enjoy a small puzzle or escape rooms specifically.
However there isn’t enough to this game to make the recommendation especially glowing.
It’s good. None of the surrounding elements of story and characters do anything for me personally and without that it may as well have been a selection of escape room puzzles in a menu, in fact, even if it was I think I would just have less to write about and come to the same score and conclusion.
Before I end this, I will say if you are looking at scores and judging whether your time is worth it based on that, then there are a few elements which could increase your score that do not affect it for me.
The obvious one out of the way, if you start to play this and love the art, characters and humour then it’s going to pull you along for a much more comfortable ride.
The main thing I feel bad about not covering though is the multiplayer elements, I am sure that this game can be more enjoyable with friends but I don't even know how it works, whether it’s the same rooms or something slightly different.
Escape Academy, it’s on Game Pass, it’s not going to blow your mind but give it a go if you like to escape the room just like I do.
Escape Room games are a lot more common, so if one would like to set itself apart from the pack and not simply be another “cheap indie” they need new ideas, good themes and a little bit of something else.
Escape Academy takes the route of creating a story where the escapes are lessons and they are in a connected story with characters representing your rival, teaching staff and more.
It’s not a bad idea but it is one that did not connect with me at all.
The characters are by no means bad, neither is the writing, but I quickly found myself skipping more than I was reading. I don’t think this reflects well on me but I also don’t want it to reflect negatively on the game. It just feels like a lot of writing and character art I’ve seen already, a style my brain seems to only now associate with “a younger generation”.
It’s a nice art style that has beautiful, soft looking characters but for me there’s no charm, no excitement, I am not gripped and I certainly won’t remember any of their names in a week’s time.
Again, the idea is not bad and whilst the presentation and writing may have felt extremely run of the mill, how the escapes tie together and are varied is a much bigger success in every way. It has what one of these games needs to stand out; diversity, strong themes and well executed ideas.
Not every room is simply “find a key”, one involves multiple tiers as the building is flooding, another has you watching monitors - giving and receiving feedback in a way that is quite akin to “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” with you doing most of the work.
If there is one thing to write home about, it is that mixture of styles and great themes.
Crucially though, do they contain good thought provoking, head scratching puzzles? Sometimes.
For the most part I would say the puzzles are good, very early on you start to get a feel of what puzzle types the devs like and the structures they go for. Many of you will be happy to hear there’s not much maths, which my brain (always interpreting number hints in that way) caught me out when a picture of six letter D’s simply was meant to represent sixty rather than D possibly representing 4 as the 4th letter.
Once you learn the language of these puzzles none are frustrating but you will take a moment to figure what it wants and like a real escape room, you’ll spend another good amount of time trying to figure out where it’s relevant or how you can get what it needs.
This is where one issue arose for me, and that there are a lot of assets which were interactable were not clear enough. Even more confusing is that for example a box you can open may be identical to background junk which you can’t, meaning you waste your time looking and clicking at essentially nothing.
This along with some stages which felt far longer or more open than they needed to be would eat at time limits that are otherwise very well judged (although I mostly got A+’s so maybe too lenient?).
I understand that different settings have varying open spaces but I feel an escape room should be somewhat confined and the eureka moments should be from figuring puzzles more often than scouring for an important item.
Finally while I speak on some not game-breaking but minor problems. The controls, while fine, did not feel refined. The game is first person and works as you’d expect but I would hope when focusing on a grid or something such as a keypad that I would be able to click along it, not move a cursor, to me that’s less intuitive and also not as realistic or satisfying a feeling - sure you can fat thumb keys on a keyboard in real life but I also tend to feel my hands are controlled at the hands and not like something in a crane game.
If it wasn’t clear I did enjoy my time with Escape Academy and overall would recommend it to anyone who does enjoy a small puzzle or escape rooms specifically.
However there isn’t enough to this game to make the recommendation especially glowing.
It’s good. None of the surrounding elements of story and characters do anything for me personally and without that it may as well have been a selection of escape room puzzles in a menu, in fact, even if it was I think I would just have less to write about and come to the same score and conclusion.
Before I end this, I will say if you are looking at scores and judging whether your time is worth it based on that, then there are a few elements which could increase your score that do not affect it for me.
The obvious one out of the way, if you start to play this and love the art, characters and humour then it’s going to pull you along for a much more comfortable ride.
The main thing I feel bad about not covering though is the multiplayer elements, I am sure that this game can be more enjoyable with friends but I don't even know how it works, whether it’s the same rooms or something slightly different.
Escape Academy, it’s on Game Pass, it’s not going to blow your mind but give it a go if you like to escape the room just like I do.