These days, when people think about the internet, they mostly imagine things like social media, YouTube and online gaming; this wasn’t always so, though. Back in the early to mid-2000s the internet was a different place, with forums and niche websites dominating the space instead. This was also the golden era of the Flash game: simple games just about anyone could enjoy in their web browser.
This was a gaming landscape that was just as vast and varied as the traditional one, and one of its more prolific genres was the “escape” game. The goal was always the same: solve the puzzle and escape. It was a genre that was beautifully simple in concept, but individual games could be deviously complex. Truly, they were a delight for all the bored puzzle fans out there. This particular brand of puzzler sadly died-out with the demise Adobe Flash back in 2020. There’s hope yet, though, as Coin Crew Games’ has done a fine job of bringing the art of escape into the current era with Escape Academy.
An old Flash escape game would usually present the player with an otherwise unassuming space to escape from: a car, a bathroom, an office and so on. Of course, these places would always turn out to be just off enough to make one actually want to escape. The car would have its windows barred,or the bathroom exit would have a laser fence for some reason.
The actual escaping involved careful investigation of everything in the room, and indeed just about everything did have some sort of significance since there wasn’t usually a whole lot of space to waste. Important items and clues could be found in everything from simple drawers to little cracks or stains on walls. In essence the puzzle was the whole room, not just certain elements within it.
In many ways, Escape Academy is very much an evolution of this. Obvious advancements include an overarching story with characters and fully 3D environments, but there are others; others such as puzzle and environment design. Each escape space is made of several rooms rather than just the one, and those rooms all have plenty of extra objects and red-herrings to pull players off-track. Unlike in the old browser-based flash games, forcing solutions with sheer trial and error isn’t as much of an option.
Escape Academy also makes use of things that the old flash games never could. Actions like calling another character just to hear them blurt out somebody’s name, decoding passcodes and typing them on hidden buttons, and flicking lights on and off to see secret messages are all part of it now. These sorts of things were not so easily done in this genre’s early days, so it’s truly an advancement to have them incorporated so liberally here. Escape Academy is a long-awaited step forward for escape games.
The old Flash games may have died with their platform, but the escape genre is still going strong thanks to games like Escape Academy. It has its issues like most games do, and it might even be too easy for some escapists out there. Still, though the folks at Coin Crew Games have made something that builds on the foundation that was laid down so many years ago, andthe result is actually pretty good.Even if they don’t play this one, escape enthusiasts should feel confident about the genre’s future.
