Recent reviews by JKangaroo

TL;DR
Do you like puzzle games? How about escape rooms?
Want an entire game built around completing a few, fairly high-quality and well designed escape rooms?
Do you want to do those puzzles either solo or even in co-op?!

Then Escape Academy might be right up your alley. Although a bit on the short side, It's a very fun, well polished game with great, high-quality puzzles.

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I never would have thought to try Escape Academy if not for the most recent Steam Next Fest, which had an Escape Academy demo up featuring its first 2 levels as playable. I got to say from the moment I started playing that demo I was hooked, and I do not regret picking this up and completing it day one.

Escape Academy may not be unique in its premise - many developers have tried their hand at creating similar titles, and you can find many puzzle and escape room games on the market these days - but Escape Academy might be one of my favorites in terms of its puzzle quality, ease of use, and overall aesthetic. There were a few things here and there I wished was a little different, but overall Escape Academy is a great game to experience and I would definitely recommend picking it up.

Below may be a few things you might find interesting to know more about before purchasing.

I completed Escape Academy in roughly 4-5 hours including repeating the first two levels I had previously played in the demo version.

There are 12 levels in total (including the tutorial level) in the base game, as well as a short interlude level before the finale and the occasional short dialogue section between levels. Each level is timed, taking around 15-30 minutes to complete at the expected pace on your first run through the game.

Every level can also be repeated at any time as many times as you want, however replayability does suffer somewhat as each level appears to only have one solution, causing future attempts to be easily speedran.

All of this ends up revealing Escape Academy to be a well put together, if fairly short, game. Some may find the length worrying, but for the current price of $20 it definitely feels well worth the cost in my opinion.
There does appear to be more content coming down the pipeline fairly soon though, with 10 more levels coming in future DLCs alongside a few other updates, so this fear might not be that big of an issue pretty soon!

A common issue some games face, especially in puzzle or point-and-click adventure titles, are the convoluted actions and extreme leaps in logic ('moon logic') required by the player to parse in order to occasionally solve puzzles or even to just advance further into the game (i.e. combining objects that makes no sense to be combined, and then using said object on something that makes no sense in using said item on!). Puzzle games can feel extremely frustrating if there isn't a clear goal as to what needs to be achieved, if the puzzle being solved lacks a sort of internal logic to its solution, or if its concealing necessary information from the player.

Luckily, Escape Academy doesn't succumb to any of those pitfalls. The levels in Escape Academy all feel very straightforward in what they are asking for you to accomplish, with each puzzle acting as a logical stepping stone to completing said levels; at no point did I ever feel like I was hitting my head against a wall or feeling like a puzzle made absolutely no sense. Every level and puzzle in Escape Academy felt like they had a logical thread to them that helped put you into a bit of a 'flow' state.

And although Escape Academy is fairly straightforward in its puzzle and level design, that isn't to say its bad or necessarily easy. There were quite a few individual puzzles I remember finding notable as I played through the game, both for their surprising difficulty, and for their complexity. I still recall how in the level, 'The Breakout', how I continually over-complicated one of the final puzzles before finally getting that big 'ah hah!' moment, or how even though the final puzzle of the level, 'The Lab Rat', was fairly straight forward, it was a long and complex process that left me nerve-wrackingly close to running out the clock.

And even then the puzzles and levels are fun regardless, with a wide variety of environments and themes to help each level stand out. (Big shout out to 'The Rival Room', definitely my favorite level in the game)

Escape Academy also has a surprisingly robust hint system for those players that need a bit of a hand. Although I did not need to use it during my initial playthrough, I did go back through to see how well the hint system stood up against some of the more abstract/difficult puzzles. Escape Academy definitely surprised me with how good the hints were at providing a small but helpful nudge without spoiling many solutions.

I have to be honest, I really love the aesthetic and setting. A secret, prestigious academy for escape artists to refine their trade? Where every lesson is its own escape room with crazy puzzles, all taught by a fun cast of eccentric professors? Sign me up! It really ticks a bunch of similar boxes to similarly popular school-based things like Harry Potter/etc.

Unfortunately though, the story, while fun, is fairly bare bones and really only acts as a bit of a segue between levels to provide context to the situation. While there are a few small side conversations you can have with various characters to help flesh them out, these tend to be fairly short with only a few sentences at best.

It's a bit of a shame. The game is set up in such a way that each level provides you with a medal/badge upon completion, with you needing 10 badges total to graduate and finish the game. With how everything is laid out, it really feels like the game was supposed to have more of these smaller conversations placed around the game world to flesh out the characters a bit more, intermixed with a few small puzzles here and there to split up the time between the major badge-obtaining moments. I know this game isn't trying to be anything close to something as big and complex as an RPG, but this was definitely an area that felt a bit incomplete: the characters and world are fun! Let me see and interact more with them between all my puzzle solving!

Overall though, great game! Can't wait to see more!