Escape Academy (EP)

Arena: Hackannery

Mode: Scavenger Hunt

Map: Track Trophy Fishing


I did this in Local Co-Op, with the 2nd controller doing nothing at all. You will be Red Team, and all of your puzzles will be color coded. You should get your 10 Tic Tac Toe wins and 10 Escape Race wins out of the way first. I would do these on the Hackannery as well, so you get to know how the puzzles all work. Then, when you have just Scavenger Hunt left, come finish your 50 matches.

In this mode, you have to get 5 trophies to win the game. You'll need to solve puzzles to get flash drives, which open doors with 2 trophies each. I was averaging about 10 minutes a game to begin, but after developing some strategies, I averaged about 3 to 4 minutes, with my best run being 1 minute 16 seconds.

The 1st thing you should do: find the "Power Up" box. When you hit this box, it counts down anywhere from 15 seconds to 40 seconds. This box can give you a "Master Flash Drive", which means you have to solve 1 or 2 less puzzles.

The 2nd thing you should do: find the hidden trophy in the room. Somewhere in the room is a free trophy that you can pick up without solving any puzzles. Picking this up means that you have to go in one less room, and therefore, you need to solve 1 or 2 less puzzles. The trophy tends to be in corners, on shelves, behind the DJ stage, or on one of several tables. Once you start learning possible spawn points, it's pretty easy to find.

If you've found the trophy, and you have the Master Flash Drive (or you're waiting for the box to count down), you'll need to solve 1 or 2 puzzles. The room you spawn in is fairly small, but it's packed with puzzles. You won't have every puzzle every time, and occasionally, a puzzle will give you an item and not a flash drive.
Here are some of the ones that are easy:

Figure out the Shopping Cart Price: You're supposed to go find three crates, and use the price of each crate to figure out the price of the shopping cart. But I was always able to guess the price because the value always seemed to be from $6.25-$9.75, and only numbers that are divisible by $0.25 ($6.50, $7.75, $8.25, etc.) were options. So, you can guess this one within 20 to 30 seconds of finding it.

Tsunami Arcade Game: Spin the tiles to make the picture. Every 20 seconds or so, some tiles will get shaken up. Very easy, takes about 1 minute.

Make the Fish Hybrid: This is one that takes some time the first couple of times, but if you write down the names of the fish and know what they look like, you can guess this. You only need to know 2/3 of the fish, then you can spin the wheel to guess the last bit.

The Claw Machine: This is like the shopping game a bit; there's only so many combinations of correct inputs. I often had "Up 7, Right 5, Down 3, Left 0" as one of my solutions.

Open the Clams: Like the fish hybrid, this takes some time at first, but the clam solution doesn't seem to change either. Once you know what a "Surf" clam needs to be solved, it will always have the same solution.


Some puzzles are good, but require extra items. Most of the time they can be found around the map, but sometimes you have to solve another puzzle to get the item you need. Here are the puzzles you might want to do:

Thermal Camera Safe: This one is just easy, you just have to hope the camera isn't locked behind another puzzle.

And/Or/Not Switch: Another easy one. I found that 2 signs almost always said "BOTH", so I would find those two, flipped the levers that corresponded to the 4 letters, and guess the last 2.

Vending Machine: If you're a Sudoku freak, you should have a pretty easy time getting this one. But you need "Spare Change" to turn on the vending machine.

User/Password computer: You're supposed to find a cipher to help with this one, but you can often guess the animal password. If it only takes 3 inputs before it fails, you know it has to be "COW", or "CAT", or "PIG", or whatever other animals are 3 characters. If it takes 7 inputs, it's probably "ROOSTER" or something that's 7 characters.



This overall wasn't too bad, it's just kind of boring. Even if you're getting the quick 5 minute runs, this will take 3 hours, assuming you've done all of the other achievements beforehand.

Tic-Tac-Toe is the way to go when mopping up the last of your 50 matches played, so I would recommend doing the Scavenger Hunt and Escape Race achievements first. Keep in mind that the Power Hungry achievement only seems to count in online play and not local play. Play on whatever map you are comfortable with but the info below is what I used.

Set up: Local play with and idle controller (may need to plug in or randomly press buttons to keep it active)
Arena: Tomb Of The First Escapist
Game Mode: Tic-Tac-Toe
Track: Tic Tac Tomb

The first room will always be one puzzle that will give you a key. The key opens the door to an area with various puzzles, all of which will give you a tic-tac-toe piece. You can only carry one piece at a time, so check where the tic-tac-toe board is first. I always went for the puzzles I knew I could complete in minimal time and ignored everything else. Using this method, I was able to complete a match in roughly 3.5 minutes including loading screens. After the Scavenger Hunt And Escape Race matches you should have 30 matches left - or around 1.5 to 2 hours to mop up. Good luck and happy hunting!