For a certain kind of gamer, nothing lights them up more than the promise of a big space full of environmental puzzles. Puzzles can be tricky to make accessible, though, presenting a thin line sometimes between childishly easy and frustratingly difficult.

Fortunately, Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School fills a great niche: providing a mountain of puzzles, but with clear structure, unobtrusive in-game hints, and a colorful, family-friendly, punny presentation that’s perfect for enjoying with anyone in local or online co-op (but can be played entirely solo if that’s your bag). It’s available November 5, 2026 for XBOX Series X|S and XBOX on PC, as well as day one with XBOX Game Pass.

Like the original Escape Academy, Back 2 School features lots of discrete, timed and graded escape rooms, which are delightfully free from the constraints of budget, space and physics that limit their real-world counterparts. New for the sequel, however, is that between rooms you can explore the Escape Academy campus directly as a progressively expanding hub world, which is itself full of puzzles to solve and secrets to find.

I really liked this balance between the intensity of the timed escape rooms and the more low-pressure puzzle solving and exploration between them. Connecting up the escape rooms with an interactive, puzzle-filled environment instead of clicking through a menu of static images really elevates the whole experience.

After a few hours puzzling through the game’s opening hours (and many years of real-world escape room experience), I’ve put together the following general, spoiler-free tips for aspiring escape artists:

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