Escape Academy: The Complete Edition Preview – Preview
The escape room extravaganza comes complete with DLC in the palm of your hand.
Escape Academy, the escape room adventure, has been a staple with my partner ever since it arrived on Xbox Game Pass. The multi-layered puzzles across a university campus rife with humor and characters brimming with personality are making their way to Nintendo Switch this year, and we had the opportunity for a hands-on experience at Summer Games Fest, along with upcoming DLC titled Escape to the Past.
Escape to the Past takes place in a 1950s diner, jukebox and all. Beyond the familiar friendly atmosphere, the diner features all the window dressings like old-fashioned booths, brightly lit signs, and patterned tiles. The level has you playing chef, feeding the familiar cast of school staff in their youth and delivering it via a small train on its tracks. In keeping with the rest of the game, the problem solving has a clear logic to it that guides with baby-steps and bite-sized puzzles, which chain together to open the next door.
In the ten minutes with iam8bit’s preview on the Switch after playing it on PC, it is easy to spot some of the compromises. Some of it may be due to it running on a Switch lite, but the visuals seemed a tad less crisp. Additionally, frame rate performance is meaningfully slower but holds stable, which is a mercy given how each level is timed. That said, it’s translated to the Switch in a state that should be perfectly playable.
Escape Academy: The Complete Edition arrives on the Nintendo Switch Q4 2023. Anyone who likes puzzle solving, enjoys escape rooms, or has played Escape Academy on other platforms should dig both the Escape to the Past DLC and The Complete Edition.
