Coin Crew Games will release Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School on PlayStation 5 on November 5, the studio announced in a PlayStation Blog post on October 13. The post, written by the game's art director, also detailed two areas of the sequel's campus.
According to the studio, the sequel moves from the first game's more linear narrative to an open-world campus, with couch and online co-op available from the start across the campus, its story and its puzzles. Coin Crew said the game is open to newcomers as well as returning players, and that the campus is meant to be a place filled with characters, quests and secrets to explore between escapes.
Headmaster's Tower and Humanities Campus
The campus is split into distinct sections, each with its own quests and puzzles, the studio said. The Headmaster's Tower was one of the first spaces the team built when updating the visuals, and Coin Crew said it drove the discussion of how to make a space feel academic and push the worldbuilding further. The area also returns to the Headmaster's Office, the setting of the first escape in the original Escape Academy, which the studio said it used as the visual target for the sequel's art style.
The Humanities Campus has changed the most from the first game's 2D map layout, according to the post. Coin Crew said part of the area had to be rebuilt after the events of the first game, in which the character Quanty burned down the library, and that the studio expanded on the classical architecture of the original library design. The team said early versions of the area felt too open, and that it added interactable landmarks, side quests and escapes through iteration. The studio contrasted the area's quieter feel with the industrial Science Campus and the colorful Arts Campus.
Players will not have access to the Humanities Campus immediately, the studio said, but will see glimpses of it, including a keyhole-shaped fountain visible from several vantage points on campus. Coin Crew said puzzles are no longer limited to rooms and that the campus itself is designed to reward exploration, with keyhole embellishments hidden around the Academy.
The studio said it would share further updates on the game ahead of the November 5 PlayStation 5 launch.
