It feels like every list of the best co-op games to play with a friend always includes the same handful of recommendations, and while the likes of Portal 2 and It Takes Two are great, you can only play them so many times. But there is a more recent game perfect for those in search of a challenging experience to play with a friend—2022’s Escape Academy.
The cooperative escape room simulator from developer Coin Crew Games is a masterclass in co-op design and inventive puzzle solving that feels truly unrivaled. And it’s included in Humble’s current Great Escape Room bundle, so now’s your chance to see for yourself just how amazing Escape Academy is.
From the outset, Escape Academy immerses you in a silly but meticulously realized world. You find yourself attending a special school dedicated to the art of escape, in which your curriculum consists of progressively more complex escape rooms to solve. The titular Escape Academy is filled with an eccentric cast of students and professors to get to know in between the main event of escaping from puzzle rooms, and while a great story might not be the first thing you’d expect to get out of a game like Escape Academy, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Beautiful art and some hilarious writing make learning about every character you interact with a delight, and the over-the-top narrative about a secret organization of escape artists battling it out against their arch rivals, the anti-escapists, always makes for a fun interlude between escape rooms.
The actual escaping, however, is by far the most impressive part of Escape Academy. There have been games that tried to capture the unique challenge of escape rooms before, such as Escape Simulator (also included as part of the bundle), but the simplified mechanics of such games always leave you feeling like something was lost in translation. Escape Academy has none of those pain points thanks to how seamlessly it recreates the same level of nearly unlimited interactivity you experience in a real escape room. As you progress through the school year, you’ll find yourself getting locked in the cafeteria, in a ship model quickly filling with water, and in the school’s greenhouse that is filled with explosives. Every challenge is full of intricate puzzles that will test your real-world ability to solve logic puzzles. But what ties the entire escape room experience together is the importance of communication.
A great escape room prioritizes communication above all else. With every room set on a timer that forces you to race against the clock, it becomes paramount to divide and conquer with your friends. Escape Academy involves many item-centric puzzles and you can pick up, store, or hand off these items to each other as you run around the sprawling rooms. Many puzzles require giving information to each other while at the opposite ends of the map as well, so you need to stay calm and describe intricate pieces of art or wire layouts to your partner accurately. By forcing cooperation and communication in its puzzles, Escape Academy excellently captures the hectic nature of escape rooms, requiring you to not just think clearly but to do so while overcoming the stress instilled by the clock constantly ticking down. To make everything even better, no puzzle is repeated; every single one of the base game’s twelve escape rooms are bespoke. This means that Escape Academy never gets old and never stops being a challenge for you and a friend to undertake. While you can play the game solo, you really should grab a buddy for the best experience.
If you manage to finish all the game’s puzzles, then try out some more cooperative puzzle solving fun in We Were Here Forever and Escape Simulator, which are two more of the eight total games you can get in the Great Escape Room Bundle for only $10 until August 30.
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