Hey y’all, I’m Wyatt Bushnell, co-founder of Coin Crew Games, the company that just revealed Escape Academy during the super-duper fun /[email protected] Gaming Showcase! For those of you who are looking for a co-op escape room puzzle game, look no further, because Escape Academy is a co-op escape room puzzle game.
You probably haven’t heard of us, and that’s because Coin Crew Games hasn’t always made video games. We started out building IRL escape rooms and arcade games. When the pandemic hit, we were serendipitously between projects. Arcades are not pandemic proof, so we decided to pivot, and translate our out-of-home learnings into a digital game. The result is Escape Academy.
In Escape Academy, you play as a student enrolled at the titular school, studying to become the ultimate Escapist! Solve puzzles. Meet the faculty. Brew the perfect cup of tea. The game features over a dozen hand-crafted rooms and is entirely playable in single-player or co-op with a friend – local or online!
Escape Academy is our ideal escape game: it brings together the physical aspects of escape rooms and the wild scenarios of video games. Our history with IRL games informed much of the design: how will players walk around these spaces? What props will they be drawn to? How do two players work together? Each room is designed to be solved as it would be in real life: using nothing but your noggin’.
We’re also super stoked with how the theme of Escape Academy came together, the “academy” concept has paid a ton of dividends for us creatively. The variety of school subjects let us tie interesting escape-room scenarios and wacky-town characters into a cohesive story. Additionally, I was watching a certain superhero school anime, so I’d be lying if I said that didn’t play a part in it.
Making the leap from physical to digital games was intimidating at first, but we had the help of some awesome publishing partners: iam8bit and Skybound Games. Their experience in both worlds was vital to making our kooky escape room ideas a reality.
We can’t wait to show you more Escape Academy later this year. We’re hard at work putting the finishing touches on the game, which will be escaping in 2022 day one with Game Pass for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows 10. Thanks for reading!