I love escape rooms, so the idea of a video game designed by escape room creators is right up my alley. To its credit, Escape Academy does a damn good job of capturing the feeling of completing an escape room, with the added spice of dangerous consequences that a fictional story set in a virtual space allows. Escape Academy is, however, oftentimes too accurate to the experience of an escape room for its own good. Still, there's a delightful puzzle game here that makes for a rewarding afternoon with a friend nonetheless. Escape Academy sees you step into the shoes of the newest student to attend a school that trains would-be spies, hackers, and thieves.

The bulk of the solutions come from deciphering codes, which felt like a bit of a missed opportunity to incorporate the player's surroundings into the puzzle-solving process, and they only get more dense as the game goes on. At one point after figuring out the key to getting into a locked van, I groaned out loud when I saw a periodic table of elements on the wall, realizing that it was part of the next puzzle. Some of the later puzzles work in more physicality and spatial manipulation, particularly the final level, which is reminiscent of "Portal" in how players must use the components of the puzzle itself in unexpected ways to their own advantage. It's something I would have loved to see more of throughout the game rather than just in its final act.