Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School Launches Today: First Open-World Escape Room Game, Day One on Game Pass

The biggest change from the first Escape Academy is the space between the rooms. Instead of picking the next escape room from a menu, you walk the Escape Academy campus directly. Xbox Wire describes it as a progressively expanding hub world, full of puzzles to solve and secrets to find, and the store listing calls the campus one big puzzle room. Side tasks for other students are untimed and pay out Escape Bucks, a school currency you will need at several points to move the story forward, so the game expects you to keep up with them rather than grind them all at once. Escape Bucks are also hidden around campus, tucked into places like couch cushions.

The rooms themselves keep the first game's formula: discrete, timed and graded escape rooms, free of the budget, space and physics limits of real-world rooms. Xbox Wire's tips piece stresses the basics that carry over — check everything interactable, say out loud what you find when playing with a friend, and think backwards from the objective. The hint system is built the same way: hints come in stages of increasing specificity, and while relying on them heavily affects your grade, Xbox Wire notes you can still earn an A while using one or two.

The rooms are deliberately varied in theme and tone. One classroom turns a pop quiz into a life-or-death question — the chalkboard asks who founded Escape Academy, under a ceiling of spikes — while another room builds its puzzles around a hamster cage, a combination lock, colourful tubes and a miniature football field. The throughline is the same in both: ordinary school spaces turned into puzzle boxes.

The full campaign can be played solo or with a friend in online or local two-player co-op, and the new No-Timer Mode removes the clock entirely for players who would rather puzzle without pressure. Co-op partners can split the work: one player can read a solution out loud while the other enters the code, and the split-screen view keeps both players' puzzles visible at once. The sequel is open to newcomers — Coin Crew Games says no knowledge of the first game is required — and the first game, which the publisher says was enjoyed by over 4 million players, remains a separate purchase.

The standard edition is $19.99 on the Microsoft Store, and AltChar's review lists the same $19.99 price. The Deluxe Edition is $29.99 and bundles the full game with a Season Pass covering two upcoming major expansions, each with a new narrative, new escape rooms and extra-credit side quests, plus the Mask-uerade cosmetic pack of ten animal-themed masks. The Game Pass side needs care: Xbox Wire's November wave 1 post lists Escape Academy 2 for Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass only. Premium and Essential subscribers do not get this one on day one — Essential's November additions are a separate batch of classics arriving November

15. On PC, the game is on Steam and the Epic Games Store; the Steam page still listed the game as coming soon with no price at the time of writing, so check the store page for the final Steam price before buying.

The sequel tells a new story built for new and returning players: a conspiracy as old as the school itself, new teachers and familiar faces from the first game, and an expanded curriculum of character-driven storylines and puzzle-stuffed side quests. Early reviews, published November 3, are warm on the rooms and more cautious about the open world around them. AltChar, which reviewed the PlayStation 5 version, praises the escape rooms but says the stream of side-task homework can wear thin before the final bell, and notes PlayStation 5 crashes; Gamespew scored the game 8 out of

10. Reviewers also note the developer told them a day-one update with visual bug fixes and performance optimisations was planned.