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Escape Academy News

Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles Steam Playtest is live NOW!

Hello and Happy New Year fellow Escapists!

Coin Crew Games has exciting news about our free major update: it’s titled Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles, it features procedurally generated escape rooms, and the best part? You can playtest it NOW using the Steam Playtest feature!

[h2]What is Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles?[/h2]

Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles is our free, major content update which introduces one of the community's most requested features: replayable levels!

Join Coach Yoach and his crack team of Puzzletes as they compete against other Escape schools to bring the championship cup back home to Escape Academy!

Tournament of Puzzles features procedurally generated escape rooms that take place in all new, massive arenas themed around each Escape school. Puzzle your way through the rainy, neon labyrinth at Hackademy’s “Phish Market” and do your best to survive the perils of History High’s “The Tomb of the First Escapist.”









Every time you compete in a heat of the tournament, you’ll encounter different puzzles and challenges, procedurally selected from our ever-growing depot of brain twisters. No two runs will be the same!

The Tournament of Puzzles Playtest can be played single player or in co-op!

A NOTE ABOUT MULTIPLAYER: While online play is accessible in this build, there are known desync issues that will make the completion of levels nearly impossible. We strongly urge players to stick to playing locally with friends for the best co-op experience. Steam remote play or other third party screensharing apps could function as an alternative. Enter online at your own risk!

[h2]How does the playtest work?[/h2]

Pay a visit to our Store Page and request access to the Steam Playtest! This playtest will run from today, Friday 1/27 to Monday 1/30 and everyone who requests access will be permitted to play.

On Monday morning, we’ll close access in order to take some time digesting your feedback, incorporate it back into the game, and get ready for another playtest!

You don’t even need to own the base game in order to access the playtest so if you don’t own the game, you can hop on in without spending a dime!


[h2]What is the purpose of this playtest?[/h2]

The purpose of this playtest is to gather feedback in order to improve and build out this new mode of play. As lots of its elements are experimental in nature, we wanted to hear what you’d like to see in a procedural escape room experience. Our hope is that by opening this up publicly, we can gather large amounts of player feedback and refine the update before its full release across all platforms.

We want to emphasize that this content is still in active development, and therefore players may experience issues that haven't been ironed out yet. So, while not the primary purpose of this playtest, we will also be making note of any major bugs discovered by players (and we appreciate the flagging of those when they occur).

Rigorous playtesting has always been a part of building Escape Academy, and Steam Playtests are a great chance to bring that to a significantly larger stage.


[h2]I’ve downloaded the build, how do I access Tournament of Puzzles?[/h2]

Once in build, start a new save and quickly play through the tutorial level and make your way to the map screen.



Once you arrive at the campus map, press TAB. Then, on the DLC select screen, select Tournament of Puzzles.



After selecting Tournament of Puzzles you will be placed into a 3D diorama. On the left is a TV screen labeled “Tournament Mode” that you can click to start your first heat in the tournament!



[h2]Where can we share our feedback?[/h2]

General feedback can be submitted on our Steam page or on the #feedback channel of our Discord, but we’ve also built a questionnaire for more pointed questions and player input!

Questionnaire Link

[h2]Will there be more playtests?[/h2]

Yes! Our goal is to run public playtests once a month until the full release of the Tournament of Puzzles across all platforms.

[h2]Thanks for helping us make our game better![/h2]

As mentioned, playtesting is a critical piece of development at Coin Crew Games and we’re thrilled to bring more of our playerbase into the development of our content.

Keep your eyes peeled on our Twitter, Discord, and Steam Page for future playtests and other Escape Academy announcements!

Cheers,
Coin Crew Games

Escape Academy Patch 1.07 is Now Live!

Hello Fellow Escapists!

The Coin Crew Games team has been hard at work pulling together a patch for our first DLC with some bug fixes and UX polish! We appreciate everyone's patience in getting this patch live across all platforms as we wanted to make sure this addressed the issues that discouraged some folks from finishing the DLC.

Full patch notes are below-- but be warned! There are some puzzle spoilers below (for the last two levels). Read at your own risk!

  • High GPU consumption on Very High / Ultra graphics settings fixed.
  • A handful of desync errors have been addressed.
  • Chatterbox Achievement not activating on the base game after talking to the appropriate amount of characters is fixed.
  • On "The Experiment" the bugs on the rotating discs math puzzle (attached to the turret) have been fixed.
  • On "Into the Capture Dimension" the laser-maze puzzle no longer completes itself before the mirrors are placed correctly.
  • On "Into the Capture Dimension" the issue where the mirror tiles on the laser-maze puzzle get stuck on top of each other has been fixed.
  • On "Into the Capture Dimension," based on user feedback, we've implemented a system that will reveal where previously triggered bombs and number tiles are on the board so it's not a complete board reset every time a bomb is triggered.


Thanks a bunch for everyone's feedback so far and to those who have supplied us buglogs and other helpful information. We're grateful so many of you care enough to help us continue to make Escape Academy a better title.

Coin Crew Games

Escape from Anti-Escape Island - Upcoming Patch

Hey there Escapists!

We've made it through launch weekend on our first DLC and are glad people have been able to experience what the Coin Crew Games team has been hard at work building the last few months. That being said, we've received reports of bugs and some feedback on the UX for specific puzzles and we wanted to let everyone know that we're aware and actively working on fixes!

We are super appreciative of the feedback and we wanted to make sure the community knows we're taking the reports seriously and we're shooting to get a fix out as quickly as possible (while ensuring all the fixes are bulletproof).

[h2]What are we working on?[/h2]

There are a handful of nasty desync issues and one puzzle in particular has some UX smoothing out that's needed. More specific patch notes below.

[h3]POTENTIAL PUZZLE SPOILERS[/h3]

  • Inappropriately large GPU consumption on Very High / Ultra graphics settings is getting smoothed out.
  • Chatterbox Achievement not firing properly on the base game after talking to the appropriate amount of characters is being fixed.
  • On "The Experiment" there's multiple bugs with the spinning wheel, math puzzle on one of the turrets. These are being addressed.
  • On "Into the Capture Dimension" there's issues where the laser-maze puzzle completes without placing the mirrors correctly and occasionally the mirrors get stacked on top of each other rendering the puzzle unsolvable. Both of these are being addressed.
  • Also on "Into the Capture Dimension," we've received a lot of feedback surrounding the UX on the mine field puzzle. In order to make this less frustrating, we are implementing a system that will reveal where previously triggered bombs are located on the board so it's not a COMPLETE reset every time a bomb is triggered.


If there are additional bugs that have effected your experience with the DLC, please let us know in the comments or on our Discord! We want to make sure this patch captures and fixes as many issues as time allows.

[h2]Timeline[/h2]

We are planning to push a new version of the game up to our "Hotfix" branch this Friday 11/18.

As a heads up, it will take a bit longer to get the fixes pushed and ported to consoles, so for those cross-playing with friends on non-Steam platforms, there may be some compatibility issues on the hotfix branch as we're introducing new features for one of the puzzles.

Provided everything is stable, we'll get this all merged on to the main branch and all other platforms as soon as possible.

[h2]A Note from Coin Crew Games[/h2]

For those of you who've had their experience with the DLC and Escape Academy soured by bugs, we are sorry! We hope that these fixes will encourage those who were unable to finish the DLC, to do so.

Your feedback and engagement is important to us so PLEASE continue to flag things as they arise. We'll do our best to fix in a timely manner and take all of these learnings into future Escape Academy content.

Cheers,
Coin Crew Games

Escape Academy DLC 1 - Escape From Anti-Escape Island is Now Live!

[h2]Escape From Anti-Escape Island is Live![/h2]

The day is finally here and Escape Academy's first DLC, Escape from Anti-Escape Island is now live and playable. Escape from five brand new, handcrafted rooms featuring harder puzzles, zany premises, all strung together by an exciting follow up narrative to the basegame.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

For players who purchased the DLC through season-pass, just make sure you update your Steam build and it will now be available! For those who have not purchased the DLC yet, head on over to its Steam Page and get to escaping.

Once installed, the DLC will be available via the campus map screen by pressing TAB and selecting Escape From Anti-Escape Island.

The Coin Crew team is thrilled to be able to share this DLC with everyone and keep your eyes peeled for news on our future content.

GLHF,
Coin Crew Games

Escape Academy's Escape From Anti-Escape Island DLC crashes onto PC today


I’m of the strong and perhaps completely nonsensical opinion that any game is better when it’s set on an island. School me in the comments, please do, but I suspect that Escape Academy: Escape From Anti-Escape Island, new DLC launching for the puzzle game today, might lend my claim some extra weight. That could always be the baggage plummeting from the sky over Anti-Escape Island though, where a summer vacation for the students of Escape Academy has gone very, very wrong. Check out the trailer below.


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