My partners and I absolutely love playing puzzles games together, especially mystery games that are either written or presented as “escape rooms in a box.” We recently played through Escape Academy’s main game via Xbox Game Pass and both available DLCs (“Escape from Anti-Escape Island” and “Escape from the Past,” both of which we purchased digitally).

This 1-2 player game tasks you with solving a series of increasingly difficult and dangerous puzzles to graduate as fully trained Escapists, but you also have to save the school from villainous hands along the way. The story builds as you go, and after finishing levels you can go back at any time to replay them.

Escape Academy is honestly just a good time. The art is stunning, for one, and the gameplay is fast-paced and engaging. I enjoyed the music, the sometimes straight-up bizarre dialogue, and how exciting it felt to put together early-game clues with endgame answers.

There isn’t a ton of world-building or character development in Escape Academy (except for a couple main players, which I won’t spoil for you here), but the game still feels inviting and lived-in. The stakes feel real enough to matter.

I think playing this solo would have taken longer and taken away some of the enjoyment, primarily because I’m prone to giving up when puzzles when things get especially frustrating or hard. (I’m learning how to stay determined, and it’s a long curve!) But working together with my partners to solve each level felt invigorating. Although you can’t play with more than two people on controls, having a third (or even fourth) person along for the ride to help keep track of cyphers, keys, and more makes things move even smoother—especially if each of you has really different strengths.

Going into Escape Academy, I was prepared to like but not love it and now I hope developer Coin Crew Games and publishers Skybound Games and iam8bit release more DLCs soon. The original game launched in 2022 and second DLC, “Escape from the Past,” was released last summer.

Later this month marks the launch of a PvP-focused content update, which also looks interesting, if very different from what I love about the game currently.

Whatever the future brings for Escape Academy, I’m in. If you love a good puzzle game and want to see what I’m talking about, I hope you’ll check it out soon.

Escape Academy is available for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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