Escape Academy

Introduction

Escape Academy enrols the player at a school for professional escape artists, working through a series of themed rooms — a shared bank vault, a ghost-hunting mansion, a rival team's lair — either solo or with a second player in local or online co-op, solving interlocking puzzles against a ticking clock while a light visual-novel story threads the rooms together. Developed by Coin Crew Games and published by iam8bit Presents, it released 13 July 2022 and sits at Very Positive, 86.4% across the 907 English-language reviews this review reads in full. The individual puzzle design is the clear high point of that sample. What's worth examining closely is a specific cluster of complaints that recur with unusual consistency from launch week through reviews written in 2025 and 2026 — not fading, as launch-week criticism usually does, but persisting largely unchanged.

Puzzles that earn their praise

Start with the clearest point of agreement across the sample: the room design itself is genuinely good. Reviewers on both sides of the recommend line describe the puzzles as clever and well constructed, with real variety between rooms rather than a single mechanic reskinned repeatedly. Co-op specifically draws its own praise as the format the game is built for — reviewers describe genuinely fun shared problem-solving with a partner, and one detailed 50-hour review specifically credited the 1v1 competitive mode as "a nice addition for some friendly competition" beyond the core cooperative campaign. For players newer to the escape-room genre, several reviewers frame the game as an approachable, well-paced entry point rather than the steeper, more obtuse puzzle logic some genre veterans associate with the format.

The timer nobody can turn off

Here's the complaint that dominates this game's negative sample by a wide margin, stated in nearly identical terms across years of reviews. Escape Academy's rooms run against a mandatory countdown clock, and there is no option to disable it. That's a real, specific design decision, not a bug, and a meaningful share of reviewers — including several who otherwise recommend the game — describe it as actively working against what they wanted from a puzzle experience. "I don't find competition or pressure fun," wrote one 90-vote reviewer, asking directly for a toggle other players had already requested. A 95-vote review from 2024, more than two years after launch, put it plainly: "the whole game is completely ruined by implementing a timer into every mission. Instead of enjoying yourself taking your time to figure out the interesting puzzles, you always have the feeling you're under pressure." What makes this worth dwelling on rather than treating as one preference among many is the timeline — this specific request appears in reviews from 2022 through 2025, which suggests it was never implemented despite being one of the most repeated, specific pieces of feedback the game has received.

A short campaign against a pricier DLC catalogue

The second recurring complaint concerns length and pricing together. Most reviewers report finishing the roughly twelve-room main campaign in around four hours, which a substantial share of the negative sample considers thin for the asking price on its own — before accounting for the DLC. Checking the storefront directly confirms the specific version of this complaint several reviewers made at launch: two expansion packs are priced at NZ$14.75 each, or a season pass bundling both at NZ$18.49, against a base game price of NZ$24.79. Buying everything comes to roughly double the base game's cost for what reviewers who've played the expansions describe as a comparable few hours of additional content each. One reviewer flagged this specifically as a trust concern for a studio with no prior Steam releases launching at a premium price with expansions already planned; whether or not that's a fair read of the studio's intentions, the arithmetic itself checks out against the store's own listed prices.

A specific, unresolved feature promise

A smaller but concrete complaint is worth including because it's checkable rather than a matter of taste: the store page lists Cross-Platform Multiplayer as a supported feature, and a review posted in early 2025 — well over two years after launch — reports that PC and console players still cannot join each other's sessions despite an update the previous summer, calling the situation out directly by name. This review can't verify the current state of that feature independently, but the specific, dated nature of the complaint, made against an explicitly advertised capability, is worth passing on rather than assuming resolved.

The story and tone, a matter of audience fit

A smaller cluster of complaints concerns tone rather than mechanics. Several reviewers, especially those who came from more atmospheric puzzle games like The Room or Myst, describe Escape Academy's cartoonish visual style and quirky characters as a poor fit for what they wanted, with one specifically finding the music distracting from concentration. Others, including reviewers who admit skipping the story dialogue entirely, report no issue at all with the tone once they focus on the rooms themselves. This reads less like a flaw and more like a genuine audience split — the lighter, more comedic framing is a deliberate choice that will suit some puzzle fans better than others, and it's worth knowing which side of that split you're likely to land on before buying.

Final Verdict

Escape Academy's puzzle design earns the praise it gets — clever, varied rooms that work especially well in co-op, wrapped in an approachable, accessibility-conscious package for players newer to the genre. What keeps it from a stronger recommendation is a specific, dated pattern of complaints that haven't faded with time: a countdown timer players have asked to disable since launch and never got, a main campaign that takes most players about four hours against a DLC catalogue priced to roughly double that cost, and at least one advertised feature, cross-platform play, a recent review says still doesn't function as promised. If a countdown clock doesn't bother you and you're playing with a partner, there's a genuinely well-made game here. If either of those specific complaints matters to you, they've mattered to plenty of other buyers for years without being resolved.