The genre of “Escape Rooms”, both in video games and in real life, has a very particular appeal. Many people like to rack their brains following clues to find their way out of “dangerous” confinement situations, where a time limit also adds to the pressure to “die”. Even in many cities there are places where groups of people can experience these situations in the flesh.
ESCAPE ACADEMY It brings us elements that we have already seen in other games of this style, but adds a little twist with a school story in the form of a visual novel, with entanglements, mysteries, charismatic characters, friends and rivals.
ESCAPE ACADEMY It is available for Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and PC.
TU-SAM CHILDREN
Although the basis of the game focuses on putting us in situations where we must find the exit from certain rooms using all the clues and elements available around us, the title has a background story, told through scenes and dialogues that remind us of Japanese visual novels. Basically we are the new student of the Escape Academy, a super secret and exclusive institute where they are dedicated to training the best Escapists in the world. The best students will become key pieces for your government, and their skills will be essential when carrying out espionage, infiltration or rescue missions. Of course, the academy will be full of extravagant characters, from professors who will teach us new techniques or give us surprise exams of the craziest and even deadliest, to other students who can get along with us or try to put stones in our way so that Let’s not be better than them.
Thus, the story progresses according to each quarter of the school year, where we are going to attend escapism classes, pass exams, interact with the other characters and even have to collaborate from time to time with professional Escapists in real missions outside the academy.
THERE IS NO LOCK THAT STOPS ME
Through a map we will be able to choose which area of the campus we want to go to. In some places we are only going to have conversations with other characters and in others, marked with a key symbol, we are going to find an Escape Room. Once we access that place, we will be informed of both the difficulty (according to the number of keys) and the time we have available to complete that room. Some rooms have short times, less than 10 minutes, while others can demand more than 30, always remember how complicated or extensive they are. In fact, there are places where opening the door of a room does not take us to the exit, but directly to another room, with its corresponding puzzles, and the clock keeps ticking, of course.
We move our character at will through each room, while with a cursor we are observing, interacting or collecting objects around us. The puzzles are quite well designed and not overly difficult. Combinations of numbers to open locks, assembly of puzzle-like figures, hacking of computers, preparation of antidotes, tracking of personal data, are some of the problems that we are going to face. The most important thing is that ALL the answers are there, there is really nothing to guess because all the clues or elements are present in each scenario and it is only a matter of analyzing them better or looking in more detail for an object that we are missing.
The title has a dozen rooms, which with the time it takes us to discover their secrets and think about their solutions, should not fill us more than 5 or 6 hours to complete. Once finished, we will receive a grade from the teacher who proposed the exam, which will be defined by the time we have taken and the amount of help we have requested to solve each riddle. Anyway, and this is the only negative aspect that I can think of in the game, the solutions of each room never change, so if we are about to run out of time we can “cheat”, leaving the room and re-entering , already repeating everything we had discovered much faster.
MY ACADEMY OF HEROES… I SAY, OF ESCAPISTS
Technically the game is quite correct and functional, without standing out too much in any aspect. The graphics are colorful, and the characters have interesting designs. The settings are wide and full of details, and although they are not very elaborate, all the objects on the screen are clear, which is very important for a game of this style. A little more variety is missing when it comes to dialogue scenes, as there is only a single 2D design of each character at the moment, and perhaps it would have been better to have at least three or four of each to express different emotions according to what is being discussed in each situation, so this takes away a bit of depth from the story.
The sound, too, is a simple thumbs up. There are pleasant melodies in moments of calm, some even with a vocal part, and others much more accelerated and oppressive when the clock is ticking and we urgently need to find a way out. The voices, on the other hand, are very limited, and except for a couple of random words that the characters emit when talking to them, everything is handled simply by means of on-screen texts.
In any case, the most important aspect of the game, the resolution of escape situations within a time limit, is excellently developed and all the puzzles have their logic and totally rational solution, and, as I said before, everything is there, so it’s just a matter of looking for what we are missing or what we are not seeing, but for players used to this type of game (such as the saga of WE WERE HERE or OPERATION TANGO) nothing is overly complicated, even in the longest and most difficult puzzles.
And the best thing about the game is that we can play both alone and with another person, either locally or online, which adds a lot of fun and replayability to the title.
OPEN SESAME
In summary, and weighing all the qualities that the game has, it ends up being a quite enjoyable product. The story is “new” for a game of this style, the puzzles are elaborate and engaging enough to keep us glued to the screen for a long time, and technically it’s fine. The only thing that lowers that same balance a bit is that, once we discover all the solutions of the riddles, as these do not change the game, it loses all its challenge, and everything can be solved in a couple of minutes, which It directly impacts how long we are going to play it.
It’s not going to be much, of course, but it’s going to be a few hours of real enjoyment.