It didn’t take long for Escape Academy 2 to remind me why the first game was such a sleeper hit. The original had a great hook—escape room challenges with a fun academic twist—but this sequel feels like the team at Coin Crew Games broke the format open and rebuilt it from the ground up. After spending some hands-on time solving puzzles and goofing around on campus with a friend in couch co-op, I can say this is looking to be one of the smartest, most satisfying puzzle games of the year.
Smart Puzzles, Safe Nowhere
Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School opens with a classic-style escape room tutorial—tight, contained, and full of clever tricks—before opening the doors (literally) to a full 3D open-world campus. That’s the biggest change this time around: the school isn’t just a hub, it’s a sprawling, explorable space loaded with secrets, traps, and offbeat characters. One moment you’re deciphering cryptic riddles in a professor’s office, and the next you’re crawling through hidden tunnels beneath the dorms. It’s a full-on escape room playground.
During my session, I teamed up with a fellow attendee in local co-op, and we immediately got into the groove, shouting half-baked puzzle theories, scribbling nonsense on scratch paper, and throwing out high-fives every time we cracked something tricky. The game supports both couch and online co-op, and the new optional no-timer mode is a great addition for players who want to take their time without pressure.
A Campus Full of Secrets
Puzzle design feels just as sharp as ever. Everything is handcrafted by veteran escape room designers, which gives the rooms a consistent flow and clever structure. Better still, the sequel sheds any constraints of “real-world safety rules”—so expect the kind of deathtraps you’d never get to see in a physical escape room. (Spiked ceilings? Check. Massive drops? You bet.)
The demo didn’t have the final hint system in place yet, but even without it, the game encouraged collaboration in fun ways. It made the whole thing feel more social and immersive, like you were really attending some bizarre, deadly academy for puzzle nerds.
A Familiar Beat
With returning characters, a new mystery-driven story, slicker visuals, and another fantastic soundtrack from DJ Doseone, Escape Academy 2 feels like exactly what a sequel should be. It doesn’t just give us more of the same; it takes the original’s foundation and expands it into something smarter, stranger, and way more ambitious.
