Both Escape Academy games have content outside their base campaigns, and the 2022 game’s DLC is where its most interesting third space lives: a competitive, arena-based puzzle mode that plays nothing like the main game.
The Tournament of Puzzles is a major content update for the 2022 original, released on April 18, 2024, and it was free to play on the base game. You travel with Coach Yoach through a head-to-head, globe-spanning series of puzzle competitions. It added three massive arenas, three new game modes, puzzle power-ups and a batch of additional achievements.
| Arena | Description |
|---|---|
| Tomb of the First Escapist | Deep in the heart of Egypt, where Escape began. Puzzle your way through the tomb’s secret passages and try not to become a permanent resident. |
| Hackannery | An abandoned fish cannery turned hacker enclave on a rain-soaked pier, overloaded with technological and aquatic themed puzzle surprises. |
| The Showman’s Studio | The biggest theater in all of Escape, and a plethora of magical challenges to confront. |
The arenas are giant and replayable, with secret passages and alternate routes so that two players do not solve them identically. The three modes are Escape Race (a head-to-head puzzle race to the finish), Tic-Tac-Toe (the classic connect-three, with the X’s and O’s all locked up), and Scavenger Hunt (search for trophies while you hunt for solutions to tricky puzzles). Power-ups let you deploy distracting traps against your opponent, or take assists for an advantage.
If you are a solo solver, Coach Yoach will happily let you work through the courses alone — the practice mode is the same courses without the competition, which is a good way to learn the arenas before you go up against someone. The mode also has its own trophy, Senior Varsity Puzzlete, for fifty matches.
| Add-on | Notes |
|---|---|
| Escape From Anti-Escape Island | The first major expansion, released November 10, 2022 (Steam app 1934530). Deliberately harder than the base game — it takes the room concepts somewhere meaner. |
| Escape From the Past | A 2023 expansion that sends you somewhere in the Academy’s history rather than its present. |
| Into The Capture Dimension | A 2022 add-on built around a capture-dimension mechanic rather than a new room. |
| Season Pass | Bundles Escape From the Past and Escape From Anti-Escape Island. Also sold individually. |
The DLC adds its own rooms to the achievement pool — including the two Eel rooms, Eel’s Rotating Chambers and Eel’s Battery Lock, each with a movement-count achievement — and its own achievement groups on Steam. In practice, the whole 2022 game with every add-on is very cheap now: it has been sitting at a deep discount on the PlayStation Store and Steam, and it was free on the Epic Games Store on January 1, 2024, the first giveaway of that year. If you have never played it and you are deciding between the two games, that is the cheapest possible way to find out which one you want.
Escape Academy 2 launched with a $14.99 Season Pass that includes two upcoming major expansions. Each expansion brings an all-new narrative set in the Escape Academy universe, brand-new escape rooms, extra Extra Credit side quests and more, and both are playable solo or in local or online co-op.
The pass also includes the Mask-uerade cosmetic pack — officially styled with a pun, in the series’ tradition — containing ten Animal-themed masks said to be steeped in the Academy’s mysterious history, usable through the new character customization system. It is not included with Game Pass. The Deluxe Edition at $29.99 bundles the base game, the Season Pass and the Mask-uerade pack together.
Two expansions are already confirmed as promised content, so the roster of 42 trophies is not the final roster — the new rooms will bring their own story and mastery rewards. That is the strongest argument for buying the Season Pass up front rather than waiting.