Escape Academy was released in July 2022 and was a breath of fresh air. The puzzling genre has not only been reinvigorated by it, it reinvented the genre and managed to capture the essence of an in-person escape room. When it was released, Dayna had this to say in her review “Escape Academy is a family-friendly puzzle game that will give you hours of fun at a very reasonable price point.”, accompanying it with a score of 8.5.
I agree with Dayna in her original scoring, and with Escape from the Past, being a DLC doesn’t really do anything to change the game drastically. Escape from the Past deals more with the lore behind the Headmaster and how she bested her rival and earned her spot at the academy.
All the mechanics make a return here with the inventory system holding your items, with the ability to pin notes, and the hint system also returning. Although, I sometimes did manage to hit that hint button by accident, which was unfortunate because each time you ask for a time extension or hit that hint button, it brings your overall score down.
That’s not to say the puzzles aren’t interesting. In fact, some of the best mysteries are present here in Escape from the Past. Specifically, the entire culmination of the final puzzle, bringing a bunch of rooms and making them all important to each other, marks a new step for Coin Crew Games in the general scope of their puzzle rooms.
“You will encounter five new puzzles with the Escape from the Past DLC.”
In Escape from the Past, we will journey through the academy playing younger versions of Solange and Eel from the base game. During your first puzzle, our goal is clear. After someone makes an attempt at the current headmaster’s life, it is up to us to figure out who the culprit is. Quite quickly, it is narrowed down to three suspects, and that is where our story takes place.
You will encounter five new puzzles with the Escape from the Past DLC. The beginning race puzzle, which, if you are playing with someone, you will be racing against them. It is nice in theory, but in actuality, the person I play with only plays a few video games, and we work as a team trying to solve all the puzzles. The first puzzle almost turned us away immediately, but the idea of having to compete against each other quickly gets dropped, and we can get back to good old room-escaping.
“…after the finale of Escape from the Past, I sit here thinking and wanting to see what Coin Crew Games has up their sleeves next.”
After the setup racecourse, you will follow up with three other puzzle rooms based on the three suspects. These rooms are returning rooms from the base game, so that sense of discovery and wonder as you unlock these rooms is absent, which is a shame because the puzzles presented in the rooms are pretty good. It’s hard to overlook the discovery feeling, when you’re not surprised by what side rooms open up as you puzzle your way through.
It had also been quite a while since I had set foot into Escape Academy, but feeling like we had all the knowledge we needed to get my partner and me through these rooms, we jumped right into the DLC without brushing up on our skills. This is mostly doable for the first course, but as you get deeper into the rooms presented afterward, things get very complicated and quite complex.
With the hint system returning, I figured this would be okay, but I found that sometimes the hints were maybe a little too cryptic, leading us to kind of ponder around the rooms until we brute forced something or took a break and came back to the game later in the day. The grand finale, though, makes everything worth it. I enjoyed so much how Coin Crew Games has evolved its escape room tactics and style.
During the base game and even the first DLC of Escape Anti-Escape Island, I found myself having a fantastic time. But after the finale of Escape from the Past, I sit here thinking and wanting to see what Coin Crew Games has up their sleeves next. They really blew me away with that final puzzle extravaganza.
