Today’s the day! Return to the Academy with our second DLC, Escape from the Past, now live and playable!
Visit the Academy of yesteryear in this prequel DLC (included in the Season Pass) that puts players in control of Sandra Solange and Eel Barnes all the way back when they began their journey as students at the Academy!
After a harrowing "accident" at an Academy sporting event nearly results in the death of Headmaster Horatio Windsor, he becomes certain that one of his faculty members is trying to MURDER HIM!
Now, it’s up to you to piece together clues spread throughout the five all-new, connected levels and crack the case!
How to Play
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 the Past.”
If you’re starting a new game, you’ll have access to the campus map after beating the first level
Escape Academy featured in Steam’s Daily Deal!
And that’s not all! For the next week, Escape Academy will be on sale for 35% off!
If you’ve been waiting for the right window to buy then look no further, it’s the deepest discount to date! And, with the launch of our second DLC, this marks the completion of the season pass!
That’s a whole lotta puzzlin’ for a little over a dozen…
…dollars!
Thanks for Playing
The Coin Crew Games team is thrilled to be able to share this big, exciting DLC with everyone! We’re proud of what we’ve built and can’t wait to hear your reactions.
GLHF, Coin Crew Games
Escape Academy: Escape from the Past DLC Trailer Debut and Release Date Announce
Hello Escapists!
As the team wraps up the final polish on our upcoming DLC, Escape Academy: Escape from the Past, we’re thrilled to not only announce our release date of June 19th, 2023, but to also debut our trailer!
Visit the Academy of yesteryear in Escape from the Past. This prequel DLC (included in the Escape Academy Season Pass) puts players in control of Sandra Solange and Eel Barnes all the way back when they began their journey as students at the Academy!
After a harrowing "accident" at an Academy sporting event nearly results in the death of Headmaster Horatio Windsor, he becomes certain that one of his faculty members is trying to MURDER HIM! Now, it’s up to Sandy and Eel to crack the case all the while balancing (and surviving) their lethal coursework.
Revisit familiar environments as they were in the past and explore the Academy of old. Before Quanty, the computer lab was utilized as the school archives and the cafeteria took the shape of a 1950s diner! Each class contains clues to the mystery that players will have to piece together in order to deduce the would-be killer’s identity.
It's an Escape Academy whodunnit!
What’s Next at the Academy?
Now that the team has put all the finishing touches on Escape from the Past, next up for Coin Crew is continuing our Steam Playtests featuring our free update (coming Q4 2023), The Tournament of Puzzles! We’ve built some new mechanics we’re excited to share and gather feedback on so we’ll be administering further playtests for the PvP focused modes found in the update. Keep your eyes peeled for chances to check out the new content.
We’re ecstatic to have everyone play Escape from the Past and look forward to hearing our fans’ feedback on the PvP shenanigans we’re cooking up for The Tournament of Puzzles.
Cheers, Coin Crew Games
Escape Academy Wins at the 27th Annual Webby Awards!
Hello Escapists!
We have some exciting news to share with everyone! Escape Academy has just won not one, but TWO Webby Awards in the "Puzzle, Strategy & Trivia" and "Family, Kids & Education" categories. We’re floored by everyone’s response to the game and couldn’t be more proud of the dev team for having their hard work recognized.
From the jump, our driving motivator at Coin Crew Games has been to create engaging and approachable experiences that bring all kinds of people together. We firmly believe that games have a unique ability to spark imagination, encourage teamwork, and create a sense of community so to see Escape Academy not only nominated, but selected as a Webby Winner, for achieving those heights is an honor.
And for those of you who haven’t played yet (or are trying to convince a friend to become your escape companion) we have some more good news: Escape Academy is on sale until May 1st as part of Steam’s Puzzle Fest! Now's the perfect time to jump in and solve your way through the award-winning experience.
As always, thank you for your unwavering support. We hope to see you at the Academy.
Cheers, Coin Crew Games
Escape Academy - Release Schedule Update
Hello Escapists!
Coin Crew Games has been hard at work testing The Tournament of Puzzles update and putting the finishing touches on our second DLC, Escape Academy: Escape from the Past. We wanted to take a moment to share some updates with everyone!
Updated Release Timing for The Tournament of Puzzles
First off we wanted to thank everyone who partook in our Steam Playtest of The Tournament of Puzzles earlier this year. The feedback was immensely insightful and we were thrilled with the results and everyone’s thoughts. After ingesting feedback from the Steam Playtest, we made the decision to re-center the experience on PvP play. The dev team is in the process of building out new mechanics that lean into player on player interactions and maximize the frantic nature of trying to solve puzzles faster than your opponent.
As a result, The Tournament of Puzzles is going to be coming out later than we’d originally hoped. We are now targeting a Q4 release across all platforms. But there IS good news as well, which is that we’re going to be running more tests in order to build an experience that we’re all happy with! We want your involvement to yield an update we’re all proud of and one that you’ll have a hard time putting down. Keep your eyes peeled for more Steam Playtests and take a look at this Digital Trends article to gain some more insight into our new design direction.
Learnings from the Escape from Anti-Escape Island Release
We’d also like to take a moment to share our biggest learning from releasing our first DLC last fall: Escape from Anti-Escape Island released in a buggier state than we were happy with, and you all rightfully gave us that feedback. For Escape from the Past, we’ve spent extra polish and QA time to make for as smooth and frustration free of an experience as possible. This is also a part of the reason we’ve decided to give The Tournament of Puzzles more time in the oven. Not only do we want the design to wow everyone and fuel all sorts of puzzle rivalries, we want it to be a smooth, bug free experience.
Speaking of our upcoming DLC…
Introducing Escape Academy: Escape from the Past!
For those of you who caught the Nintendo Indie World stream this morning and watched our full Nintendo Switch, Complete Edition, Trailer you may have noticed some brand new footage from our upcoming DLC, Escape Academy: Escape from the Past. This DLC is included in the Season Pass and will be released late Spring!
Escape from the Past, is a prequel that puts players in control of familiar faces Sandra Solange and Eel Barnes as they begin their journey from Academy students to the unstoppable team of master Escapists we meet in Escape Academy.
After an “accident” at an Academy sporting event, Headmaster Horatio Windsor believes that SOMEONE at the school wants him dead. He enlists Sandra and Eel to go undercover in order to investigate each of the suspected faculty members. As the "accidents" keep piling up, players must successfully navigate (and survive!) five, all new rooms while piecing together clues spread across each in order to deduce who the killer is. It's an Escape Academy whodunnit!
Thank You
As always, thanks is owed to you, our awesome fanbase who give us awesome feedback (and have patience while we act on it). Coin Crew Games is working tirelessly to bring you exciting content with the quality as you deserve.
Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming content and playtests!
Cheers, -Coin Crew Games
First playtest for Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles is now closed!
Hey there Escapists!
Thanks to all of you who participated in our first playtest for Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles. We're incredibly thankful for the fans who dedicated some of their weekend gaming hours to assist us in improving the work-in-progress content update for Escape Academy.
We take everyone's feedback very seriously and are always hungry for more! If you have a spare moment, we'd be eternally grateful if you could fill out a quick questionnaire if you haven't done so already.
And don't worry-- this is far from the last of these playtests! We're planning to reopen the playtest once a month, all the way up until the full release of Tournament of Puzzles.
Cheers, Coin Crew Games
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!
What is Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles?
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!
How does the playtest work?
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!
What is the purpose of this playtest?
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.
I’ve downloaded the build, how do I access Tournament of Puzzles?
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!
Where can we share our feedback?
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!
Yes! Our goal is to run public playtests once a month until the full release of the Tournament of Puzzles across all platforms.
Thanks for helping us make our game better!
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 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).
What are we working on?
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.
POTENTIAL PUZZLE SPOILERS
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.
Timeline
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.
A Note from Coin Crew Games
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!
Escape From Anti-Escape Island is Live!
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.
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.
