PC Review Code Provided by Skybound
While I have been enjoying the overall journey that Coin Crew Games, iam8bit, and Skybound Games typically provide in their escape-room-styled puzzle game Escape Academy, this latest DLC is a bit of a mixed bag. There is something about escape-style puzzles that stand out from other puzzles and they are usually pretty good with these, considering my positive experience with the base game and first DLC, Escape From Anti-Escape Island. Don’t get me wrong, the Escape From The Past DLC was a good addition to the game, it’s just not the team’s best work in the overall experience of their game. Let’s dive into the details.
Story
At the end of a school race event, the suspended podium that the Headmaster was standing on seemed to have been corroded with acid! Luckily saved by the competing students, the Headmaster collects his thoughts and believes himself to be the target of an assassination attempt. And with only the headmaster, the students, and a handful of teachers having access to the podium, the culprit has to be within this group.
Considering the students are the ones that saved him, his suspicion lies solely upon the teachers. To best solve this case, or at least find proof that it is true, the Headmaster requests head students Sandra Solange and Eel Barnes to spy on the three suspected teachers and try to figure out who is behind this attack. One way or another, he intends to get to the bottom of this - especially since it could cost him his life if he doesn’t!
Gameplay
As this game does when you first load up a new chapter, it all begins with a bit of story to introduce some reasoning behind the events that are taking place. For this DLC, the adventure begins with a contest between two students. As the DLC’s title would imply, this story takes place in the past when Sandra Solange and Eel Barnes were the school’s top students. By the end of this first chunk of the DLC, something goes wrong and you end up saving Headmaster Windsor.
This event is what leads you to the overarching story of the DLC which is to snoop on three different professors and find out if they are behind a possible murder attempt on the headmaster! Each teacher will subsequently have a series of puzzles for you to solve as you help them with whatever their current event is. These puzzles are broken up between a Cooking class, a Spy class, and an Engineering class. You can go through them in any order you want.
As you go through these sections of the DLC, you will be solving a variety of puzzles using unlikely clues. You have your hint option available as well, just like before, however, they are often not very helpful this time so hopefully you won’t have to rely on them. This is one of my complaints about this DLC as most of the game’s content has been very clear when using hints, but I often found myself not aided at all by the hints provided.
After you go through each of the teacher’s classes and solve their puzzle, we reach a point that is obviously meant to be an attempt to try something different while maintaining the same puzzle style. The last level of the DLC is very strangely set up as a “prove your case” situation as you have to pick a teacher you believe is behind the attacks (each of which is experienced in the different classes you solve your way through). Once you pick the teacher you believe is behind it, there is a series of simplistic puzzles that just involve putting the right information up for the Headmaster.
I don’t want to get into spoilers, but I just have to say that the last level was a bit of a no-go for me. It didn’t provide the same kind of experience or excitement that the majority of this game has delivered before and this concept they were going for just wasn’t a great fit. I’m glad they are willing to branch out, but they didn’t pick the right branch to start their gameplay expansion with.
Verdict
Escape Academy: Escape From The Past is a fun DLC that brings interesting new puzzles to solve! While the majority of the gameplay is entertaining, they fumbled a bit on the last puzzle and with a lot of the hints provided. Even so, I really enjoyed getting to solve puzzles within this title once more and hope to see more content coming from the developers in the future! Let’s just hope they keep to their known formula seeing how that seems to work best for this game’s gameplay style.
Escape Academy and both its DLCs are now available on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and the Xbox Game Pass.
