Escape Simulator 2 Offers More of the Same in a Prettier Package, with Even More Under the Hood
- Antal Bokor
- 9 minutes ago
- 3 min read
I have to admit that I’m hooked on Escape Simulator. So, obviously, I jumped at the chance to play a sequel. And if you’re asking, “Did Escape Simulator really need a sequel?”
The answer is: the developers certainly thought so. In fact, their Steam store page lays out their reasons, among them “a fresh start” and an inspiration to “explore darker escape room themes and experiment with new gameplay and puzzle ideas.” That sounds great to me.
While Escape Simulator 2 definitely looks prettier, and has a more “realistic” and darker atmospheric tone, it’s not full of gore or scary things. Not the base game, anyway. That’s for the community to add in later.
Escape Simulator 2 is a puzzle game you can play solo, or with up to eight people total–though I’d say the multiplayer sweet spot is around 2-3 people. It features a variety of ways to interact with its environment, and therefore solve a variety of puzzles. And really, there doesn’t seem to be a limit to the type of puzzle you can find in Escape Simulator 2. Puzzles vary from logic puzzles, to finding keys to unlock a lock–though it’s rarely as easy as just finding a key.
The varied ways you can interact with objects and puzzles is what makes Escape Simulator and now its sequel stand out. You can inspect objects for clues, and in some cases objects themselves can be small puzzle boxes that require manipulation or a special key to open. There is a tactile element to the way objects are handled in Escape Simulator 2 that immerses you in these escape rooms in an impressive way..
The puzzle design in Escape Simulator 2 is great, for the most part. The puzzles are divided between three major themes, with four puzzle rooms for each theme. Puzzles seem a little harder than the first Escape Simulator, but my group was up for the challenge. The developers have obviously taken a lot of inspiration from the community with the fresh and fun ideas they’ve added into the Escape Simulator 2’s puzzles. There are some fun surprises and some real head scratchers here.
Some of the puzzles were a bit weird. Anything released by developer Pine either in the base game of the original Escape Simulator or in its DLCs were top-notch, well thought-out puzzles. But some of the puzzles in Escape Simulator 2 feel like they could have baked a bit longer, with confusing solutions or even some puzzles that seemed outright buggy. This is extra bad in a puzzle game, because our group started to wonder if the puzzle was broken or if we were missing something. 99 percent of the time it was an oversight by us, but the fear of running up against a puzzle that was outright broken was real.
And that brings me to some of the biggest issues I had, and that was in multiplayer. Desyncs were frequent, with us having to restart some levels just to unfreeze certain players at times. I’m hoping for a day one (or close to it) patch to address these issues and squash any bugs that might hinder players’ enjoyment.
Newly added for Escape Simulator 2 are harder “dark” versions of certain puzzles from the game’s puzzle rooms. I was hoping these dark versions would include more difficult puzzle rooms, but alas, it’s much more limited in scope than I initially thought. It’s cool. I guess, to have this as an inclusion. But I wasn’t as excited once I found out these weren’t harder versions of existing rooms.
And finally, that leads me to the thing I’m most excited for and I haven’t had a chance to test: community content. Escape Simulator had a robust community of room creators making some fantastic content. Escape Simulator 2, in the right hands, is a puzzle game engine. And I personally can’t wait to see what the community comes up with armed with Escape Simulator 2’s built-in room maker.
Escape Simulator 2 is a great escape room game–it’s probably the best out there–and it’s the standard to which all other escape room games should be held. Its predecessor’s community content was top notch, and if those same creators come over to Escape Simulator 2’s more robust level editor I can only imagine the crazy stuff I can expect to be seeing when they start putting out content.
Escape Simulator 2 is out today on Steam.