Hey there Escapists!
Here’s a mouthful of a clue: today’s blog talks about that thing where you’re not really sure what the answer is, but the person asking the question wants to point you in the right direction… Today’s blog is about hints. Hints are an absolute staple of escape room experiences, both physical and virtual, and our game is no different. As a team that has experience with real-life escape rooms, we really want to make sure that our hints system translates well into the physical experience of asking the game master for a hint whenever you’re struggling to make it out of an IRL escape room.
If you’ve got a good memory, or maybe if you’ve played Escape Academy 1 recently, you’ll know that we had a hint system there too. You would press a button, you’d get a prompt asking if you’re sure (because this affects your ranking at the end of the level!) and then you’d be given a hint that could range anywhere from “pointing you in the right direction” and “Hey goofball, it’s smacking you right in the face.” Similarly, when it comes to the art of hints, we want to point you in the right direction without just giving away the answer, because that takes away a large part of the mystery that makes escape rooms endearingly enjoyable. However, given that immersion is something we’re putting a lot more focus on due to the open-world elements in Escape Academy 2, we’ll need a little something extra.
In Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School, you’ll be able to access hints by tracking quests in your journal, an item that you take through the entire game. The journal functions as your map, your quest-log, and your best friend. Okay, maybe not that last one. That spot belongs to the Purfessor.🐈
Hints are hard to get perfect, so we want your thoughts. Whenever you are stumped on a puzzle what do you want, or expect, a hint to tell you? Should it be an answer? Should it point you in the direction of what you should be looking at, or something else entirely? We want to know! Of course, another great way to do this is to help us in the form of a playtest. If you’d like to join us in a playtest, check out our Discord and sign up for one!
As always, thank you for reading and the team at Coin Crew Games hopes you have an amazing Friday. We’ve been considering some more ambiguous topics that go beyond the standard “features” blogs we’ve been rolling out - maybe some puzzle design here, engineering there. What do you think? With love,Coin Crew Games