I love escape room games. Board games. In-person setups. Apps. It doesn’t matter. You can’t beat a critical test of your logical thinking and on-the-fly deduction skills. Escape Academy arrived on the scene in 2022, and it took a while for me and my fiancée to find it, but when we did, we had the best time. Eascape Academy 2 looks like more of the same and then some.
A good escape room game requires you to be attentive to the entire location, note down crucial numbers and names, and have you clawing at your own scalp in abject confusion and frustration. Escape Academy 2 has plenty of these moments, and like a good puzzle, the immense feeling of satisfaction when you finally uncover the solution is comparable only to besting a Soulslike boss.
The Ultimate Escape From Reality
Alongside fellow Insider Gaming Senior Editor “A2TheP” Albert Perkins, AP, and I were a whirlwind tour-de-force of puzzle-solving power…kind of. We took time to create some chemistry between us—ironic, as the first few puzzles were in the Science Wing of the academy—but we eventually started meshing.
With no help at all (we needed a couple of hints to get us going), we started finding clues, putting the pieces together, and our first room was a wonderful intertwining test. We needed to find animal pieces, have basic knowledge of the animal kingdom, and be observant of birds.
The overall challenge was compartmentalized into mini-puzzles, but you needed to refer back to finished solutions to help you with the remaining brainteasers.
This is why the Escape Academy franchise is above The Talos Principle and The Witness for my money.
These FEEL like proper escape rooms I’d pay good money for in RL. You need to seek out every square inch of the room, speak to everyone involved, and use a basic grasp of common sense and pragmatism to figure out the solutions. We sampled several additional rooms and began to feel smarter with every room—a false sense of security, I’m sure, with later puzzles sure to ramp up the difficulty.
Take Your Mind For A Walk
The basic premise of Escape Academy 2 is still familiar: You need to solve isolated puzzles and find solutions in one room. However, this time, you’re free to explore the academy from the get-go, and we’ve moved away from the linear, rigid structure of solving one room (or level) before moving on to the next.
At one point, we needed money to purchase the materials for the next puzzle. We did this by finding hidden money throughout the school campus and by completing side jobs: One of many new conclusions in the sequel.
They’re essentially smaller puzzles with a fun thematic story beat attached. Once we collected enough money, we headed back to the store, bought the materials…and our demo ended. I was devastated. My brain wasn’t ready to sign off. But you can see the length and scope of Escape Academy 2, and how it fixes the issues with the first game.
Exploration is key, and you’re encouraged to interact with the title’s many NPCs and recurring characters.
My only downside with the demo is that the performance wasn’t the best, but this is an early build of the game, with the full release sure to be smooth as butter.
Whereas the original could be completed in one or two sessions, I was informed at Summer Game Fest that you can expect closer to 15 hours for Escape Academy!
This is a bigger and better sequel in every sense of the word.
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We also have SGF 2026 previews on Turok Origins, Clutch, Blood Message, Valor Mortis, and Saw: Genesis.
Andy is Insider Gaming's Senior Evergreen Editor and has been in the games journalism sphere in one way or another for over 7 years. His video game taste is as…
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