Another Big Sequel Launches in Zelda and GTA 6’s November That You Can’t Miss

As I was about to bounce from a call with Coin Crew Games co-founder Mike Salyh and senior game designer Jacob Surovsky, I casually asked if their next game, Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School, had a release date yet. After 30 minutes talking about the sequel and its place in the current co-op landscape, they had one last surprise: It did, and they were about to announce it at Gamescom.

“So, it is going to be in November…” Salyh told me, anticipating my reaction. We snapped back into interview mode instantly.

In the games industry, November belongs to one title: Grand Theft Auto 6. Publishers are so terrified of crossing its path that virtually no major games are dropping that month aside from a gag game from Devolver and a batch of retro releases from Atari. Choosing to share the air with GTA 6 had become an unspoken taboo among publishers. Coin Crew Games, on the other hand, isn’t worried about Rockstar’s open-world crime thriller stealing the audience for a multiplayer escape room game.

“Obviously, time will tell, but it’s so big that I think it’s OK,” Salyh said. “I think a smaller indie title can coexist with it. I think it’s harder to compete with a lot of peer titles in September than knowing, okay, we’re gonna be the little guy in the room with the big guy.”

“It gives us time to add the carjacking mechanic to our game, which we were really sorely missing,” Surovsky added.

Coin Crew has a good reason to be confident about its gamble. As sweat-inducing as the timing may be for publishers, Escape Academy 2 arguably couldn’t be launching at a better time. It’s landing in the middle of a multiplayer renaissance, hot off the heels of both Big Walk and Orbitals. Players are hungry for great co-op experiences, and Coin Crew has spent the last four years sharpening its skills to deliver just that. If it can connect with its target audience in November, Escape Academy 2 stands to prove that video games are bigger than one single titan.

Coin Crew Games, a studio founded by real-life escape room designers, made its debut in 2022 with Escape Academy. It was a product of COVID-19 pandemic isolation; the developers wanted to capture the essence of an escape room and deliver it to players at a time when stuffing a handful of people in a box was a no-go. An Xbox Game Pass deal helped the studio find its audience, to the point where it was able to continue experimenting with Escape Academy post-launch. The team toyed around with competitive modes and procedural puzzle design in DLCs like Tournament of Puzzles, but its ambitions began outpacing its expansions.

“When we launched Escape Academy, we got so much positive feedback,” Salyh said. “We were able to continue growing the game and the player base with the DLCs. Eventually it got to a point where we realized now we actually do have the chops to pull off some of these bigger ideas. And we heard so much good feedback from the community on what they would want to see in more content that we realized that this is bigger than just another DLC. There’s a whole sequel here.”

That creative riffing led to Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School, which is a more fully realized version of its predecessor. It still centers around escape room puzzles that can be played in split-screen co-op, but it also allows players to explore the actual academy where the series is set. There’s a bigger narrative focus, more characters, and a classic adventure game flow that Salyh compares to Banjo-Kazooie. (School credits are Escape Academy 2’s version of door-unlocking Jiggies.)

As excited as Coin Crew was about the idea of that format, it wasn’t entirely sure if players would be down for an escape room game that also features a lot of open-ended exploration. But then Blue Prince came along, last year’s breakout puzzle hit in which players navigate an ever-shifting manor.

“We were pretty early in development when Blue Prince came out,” Surovsky added. “Something that it did validate was we had this big hanging question of, we wanna build this whole big campus. Can we count on players gaining a level of familiarity with this environment that has puzzles integrated into it where things aren’t going to go over their head? And then Blue Prince comes out, which is like, pay attention to every room, memorize all the rooms, learn this environment super well. Blue Prince has now primed players to be prepared to enter a campus where every corner has puzzle information in it and be totally locked in and ready to go.”

While the team was too far into development to be properly influenced by Blue Prince by the time it came out, its mainstream success was encouraging. It was proof that there was a big audience for puzzle games out there, even if the genre had become a bit of a niche in video games. The team drew inspiration from other peers, like Animal Well, a critically-acclaimed Metroidvania filled with deep puzzle layers, identifying a rising interest in the genre that stood to lift all boats.

“Puzzle games are having just such an amazing run,” Salyh said. “A lot of the games that are similar to what we’re doing are doing really well. It’s awesome because puzzle gaming is not a zero-sum game. The more puzzle games there are, I think the more people start playing puzzle games and recommending other puzzle games.”

While an increased interest in puzzle games was a welcome trend for a studio committed to that genre, more fortuitous was that Escape Academy 2 was landing right in the center of a multiplayer renaissance. Games like Peak (which the developers at Coin Crew play frequently) kicked off the so-called “friendslop” era, proving that modern players have an appetite for co-op experiences. Coin Crew banked on that idea long before the trend actually began with Escape Academy, so Surovsky has thought a lot about what draws players to games like Big Walk.

“Co-op really gives this great opportunity to play with your friends, to see your friends in a new light,” Surovsky said. “This pro-social gaming is really being embraced right now. I feel like trend-wise, we saw it kind of starting with horror, with things like Lethal Company. And now it’s moving into puzzles with things like Big Walk. Something that puzzles really lends itself well to in the co-op space is it allows you to show your friends how cool and smart you are. It allows for fun moments of, ‘I got it. Do you got it?’”

Escape Academy 2 plays into that feeling. For the sequel, the team focused on creating a diversity of puzzles that would give players an opportunity to use a skillset that their co-op partner might not possess. Surovsky recalled a moment during development where it playtested a chemistry-themed puzzle. It turned out that playtest session happened to have two chemists in it, who were excited to have a chance to flex their very specific muscles. Those are the kinds of experiences that Coin Crew wants to create in its sequel. And those moments are less about letting players show off, and more about giving friends a fun way to interact and communicate, something Big Walk does so expertly.

“We’re not really just making a game; we’re really making a hangout for people,” Salyh said. “Because when you go to Dave & Buster’s, you’re going to play games, but what you’re really doing is hanging out with your friends. So whenever we’re designing a game, we always think: What are we facilitating here? Are we trying to make them extra competitive? Are we trying to make them laugh and shove each other? We really spent a lot of time thinking about the body language of our players. When I see these co-op games that are really flourishing now, I feel like that design philosophy is a similar thing people are thinking about.”

Escape Academy 2 isn’t a friendslop game by any stretch, of course. It’s a finely crafted collection of escape rooms linked together by a narrative thread. It’s much bigger than its bite-sized predecessor, addressing a common piece of feedback Coin Crew heard from players. Still, Surovsky sees where Escape Academy 2 philosophically fits into that trend.

“What we’re holding to a higher level now in games is shifting,” Surovsky said. “It was graphical fidelity, and now graphics are incredible. You can get games with just jaw-droppingly beautiful graphics. Now we’re seeing this sort of friendslop co-op thing arise. The graphics are much simpler, but it’s facilitating this gameplay that’s a lot more reliant on friends and social dynamics. I think people are starting to go, we’ve had this beautiful feast of graphics. My eyes have been filled. Now let me fill my heart.”

Of course, players who do care about big-budget spectacle will have their hands full come Nov. 19. GTA 6 is likely to be an all-encompassing cultural phenomenon that leans heavily on jaw-dropping visuals and open-world scale. Coin Crew isn’t trying to compete with that. It knows its lane and feels that Escape Academy 2 serves a very different audience that has repeatedly shown up for smaller-scale co-op experiences. There’s plenty of room in November for different flavors of games, even if most publishers are running scared. If anything, Coin Crew sees a launch in GTA 6’s orbit as an opportunity more than a hindrance.

“It’s kind of the Blue Prince conversation through a different lens,” Surovsky said. “It’s exciting to be releasing at a time where people are going to be building up their appetite for open-world exploration. Great! Come explore our world! Here’s your warmup!”

Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School launches this November for Windows PC and Xbox Series X.