I loved, loved Escape Academy. I think it’s one of the best, most interesting games of the year, an opinion that is definitely not influenced by my brain’s incessant need to “solve a puzzle, any puzzle.”
I purposefully abstained from partaking in too many previews and demos in order to keep my full experience unspoiled. Then, when the game launched, I devoured it, pacing myself so I wouldn’t blow through it in one sitting. It’s just a really neat puzzle game set in a fantastical escape room school that trains teens to solve puzzles in increasingly life-threatening situations because… why not?
And while I eagerly await the new content updates revealed in the game’s roadmap, I must be content with a new quality-of-life update that is very welcome to me specifically.
Escape Academy has a robust hint system. If you get stuck, you can hit a button and the game will point you in the direction you need to go at the cost of dinging you points in your final score. Problem is, it was far too easy to hit that button by mistake. There were several perfect puzzles ruined by an errant slip of my hand. In the new quality-of-life update, you’re now required to press the button twice to confirm you want a hint. Now, I feel a little bit better about my second playthrough that’ll come sometime in the future when my brain has aged sufficiently enough to forget the solutions.
You can find a total list of updates and bug fixes here, and there are other updates that are just as necessary, if not as exciting to me, as the hint fix. You can now toggle splitscreen in online multiplayer, the developers have added a field-of-vision slider, and — another favorite — grading for puzzles has been tweaked to be harsher. Excellent! The puzzle perfectionist in me is pleased.
Escape Academy is out now on Xbox, Game Pass, PlayStation, and PC.
wazup.