The world’s foremost clandestine educator in the art of Escape.
Escape Academy is a first-person escape-room puzzle series by Coin Crew Games, published by iam8bit Presents. The 2022 original put you through a dozen handcrafted rooms designed by real-life escape-room experts, graded you from A+ to F on clear time and hints used, and ended with a free Epic Games Store giveaway in January 2024. Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School launched on November 5, 2026 and turned that formula into a genre of its own: the first open-world escape room game, with a freely explorable campus of four academic wings, three secret chambers, a zipline network, No-Timer Mode, 50 Red Herrings, and 11 different versions of the campus AI Quanty. Day one on Xbox Game Pass, 42 PS5 trophies worth a full 1,000 Gamerscore, and a Season Pass that already promises two more expansions.
Every room was designed by practitioners from actual live escape rooms. That means observation, not pattern-matching: read the room, find the constraint, then find the combination.
Escape Academy 2 turns the school grounds into a freely explorable map. Four academic wings — Science, Humanities, Gardens and Arts — connected by a zipline network, with three Secret Chambers hidden underneath.
Every room is graded from A+ down on your clear time and how many radio hints you burned. No-Timer Mode lets seasoned solvers work without a countdown at all.
Every room in both games supports two-player cooperative play — split-screen on one couch or online across the country. One player reads the clues while the other works the lock.
The sequel hides 50 collectible Red Herrings for Cod Stewart, 11 versions of the sarcastic campus supercomputer Quanty, 11 painting challenges, and 300 conversations worth of chatter to find.
The full PS5 list runs to 42 rewards topped by the Escape-dictorian Platinum, with 41 identical achievements worth a full 1,000 Gamerscore on Xbox and PC.
Escape Academy is a first-person escape-room puzzle series by Coin Crew Games, published by iam8bit Presents. The premise is that it is a clandestine school for people training to become professional Escapists — you are a student, the rooms are your curriculum, and the grades are real.
The original arrived on July 13, 2022 and put roughly a dozen handcrafted rooms in front of you, each designed by people who build real-life escape rooms. You play alone or with one partner in local or online co-op, you get a radio call when you are stuck, and every room you finish comes back with a letter grade based on how fast you were and how many hints you used.
The sequel, Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School, launched on November 5, 2026 across PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, and shipped day one on Xbox Game Pass. Where the first game was a corridor of rooms, the second is a campus: an open map of four academic wings — the Science Campus, the Humanities Campus, the Campus Gardens and the Arts Campus — stitched together by a zipline network, with three Secret Chambers buried underneath and more than 50 Red Herrings scattered across the whole thing.
It also added two things the original never had: No-Timer Mode, a toggle that strips the countdown for anyone who would rather think than sprint, and a character customization system that already has a cosmetic pack built around it. DJ doseone, who scored the first game, is back for campus life.
The 2022 original is not going anywhere. It went free on the Epic Games Store on January 1, 2024 as the first giveaway of that year, it is Steam Deck Verified, and it has passed four million players. If you want the classic linear room-by-room experience, it is the cheaper and tighter of the two.
The numbers worth having in one screen.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Developer | Coin Crew Games |
| Publisher | iam8bit Presents |
| Escape Academy 2 release | November 5, 2026 |
| Escape Academy release | July 13, 2022 (Steam), July 14, 2022 (console) |
| Steam App IDs | 3296060 (EA2) · 1812090 (original) |
| EA2 platforms | PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One |
| EA2 price | $19.99 launch, with a 15% launch discount |
| EA2 Season Pass | $14.99 — two expansions plus the Mask-uerade mask pack |
| EA2 Deluxe Edition | $29.99 — base game, Season Pass and Mask-uerade pack |
| Game Pass | Day one on Xbox Game Pass (Season Pass excluded) |
| EA2 trophies | 42 on PS5 (incl. Platinum), 41 achievements worth 1,000G |
| EA2 campus | 4 academic wings + 3 Secret Chambers |
| EA2 collectibles | 50 Red Herrings, 11 Quantys, 11 painting challenges |
| EA2 review scores | Metacritic 73 · OpenCritic 84 |
| Original review scores | Metacritic 79 · OpenCritic 80 |
| Original Steam reviews | 86.8% positive of 1,482 reviews |
| Original price | $19.99 Steam / $22.99 PS Store, deep-discounted since |
| Original freebie | Epic Games Store giveaway, January 1, 2024 |
| Original achievements | 40 on Xbox worth 1,500 points |
| Players | Original passed 4 million players |
| Music | DJ doseone, in both games |
One structural fact explains almost everything else: the sequel is not a straight sequel in structure. It is the same subject matter rebuilt as an open world. That is why the trophy list contains Star Student (an A+ in every room), Just Here For the Ziplines, Quanty Superposition and Herring is Caring — those are exploration goals, and they only exist because the campus is walkable.