This week’s Epic Games Store free game is Escape Academy

Escape Academy is this week’s Epic Games Store free game. It’s a puzzle game with an overarching storyline, but it also has repeatable play for solo, co-op and PVP, both local and online, for when you’ve finished the campaign.

• Release Date: July 14, 2022
• Game Type: Puzzle/Escape Room
• POV: First person
• Party: Solo, Co-op (online and local), PVP (online and local)
• DLC: Escape from the Past, Escape from Anti-Escape Island.
• This game was already offered for free in January 2024.

After going through a fairly tepid escape room in a strip mall, but making your way through a much more intricate one by accident, you are whisked away to Escape Academy. There, you must learn the ways of the escape room, helping professors and fellow students alike by making your way through more and more tough escape rooms.

Because this game was already offered for free in the past, you may already have it. I did, but like many Epic Games Store free games it sat in my backlog until I went to write this post. Once I started playing, however, I played the first entire campaign to its completion — it’s both addictive and relatively short. Well, short if you’re good at puzzles. Not to brag or anything. Though, perhaps I shouldn’t, since I didn’t dip my toes into online play with others, either PVE co-op or PVP. In general terms it was a bit easier than some escape room-style games I’ve played in the past, because those tend to rely more on finding one teeny tiny item the use of which is obvious, while this one rested more on mental puzzles, like pattern recognition and (ugh) math. I was glad I had scratch paper like the game suggested for both.

It’s definitely worth snagging, and a great way to spend at least one afternoon.