Escape Academy 2 is out on PC: reviews, editions and the GPU you need

Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School is out. Coin Crew Games and iam8bit Presents launched it today, November 5, on Steam, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. On Steam it is listed at $16.99 with a 15% discount, and you can play solo or in co-op, online or local. The requirements have not changed since on November 4 we told you it asks for Windows 10/11, 16 GB of RAM and a GTX 1050 Ti at minimum. What is new today is the launch itself: early reviews, the Season Pass and a useful note about the demo.

What the launch brings

The launch announcement spells out the extras:

• Season Pass: includes two upcoming major expansions. Each one brings an all-new story set in the Escape Academy universe, new escape rooms and extra credit side quests.
• Deluxe Edition: the base game, the Season Pass, the Mask-uerade cosmetic DLC pack, the official soundtrack and a digital artbook.
• Bundles: with Escape Simulator 2, with TOEM 2 and with We Were Here Tomorrow.

The reviews the studio quotes are positive. Techraptor gives it 9/10, GameSpew 8/10 and The Gamer 4 / 5. Polygon calls it “a near-perfect new inclusion to couch co-op canon.”

Escape Academy 2 PC requirements

These are the Windows requirements from the Steam page:

The minimum asks for DirectX 11 and the recommended for DirectX 12. The real gate is memory, not the graphics card: 16 GB of RAM is already the minimum, so a PC with 8 GB falls short even with a good GPU.

Which graphics card you need

Every popular GPU we checked clears the minimum. Against the recommended, the RTX 3060, RTX 4060 and RTX 3060 Ti grade B, meaning they meet it. The RTX 4070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT grade A, with headroom to spare.

Several very common cards sit below the recommended. The RTX 2060, RX 7600 and Arc B580 grade C: they clear the minimum and fall a bit short of the recommended. The GTX 1660 Super grades D and the GTX 1650 grades F. Both clear the minimum but will struggle. These grades are measured against the recommended requirement and assume 16 GB of RAM.

If you tried the demo and performance let you down, give it another look. The studio says the October 16 update made large strides on performance. It also stopped wiping your save at the end of the demo, and Coin Crew is confident save files will carry over to the full game. And if your PC comes up short, Escape Academy 2 is among the games joining Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming in November.

Linux and Steam Deck

The game has a Linux version and no Mac version. The Linux minimum lists SteamOS 3, an AMD Zen 2 processor, AMD RDNA 2 graphics and 5 GB of space. Valve has not rated the game for Steam Deck yet. Our spec-based estimate gives it an F against the Windows recommended, and it is only that, an estimate. Once Valve reviews it, you will see the result on the game’s Steam Deck page.

Can your PC run Escape Academy 2?

Here is how your setup grades against Escape Academy 2:

Game	Rec. GPU score	Rec. RAM	Min. RAM	Your PC
Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School	17,050	16 GB	16 GB	?

The full game page shows your grade with your own GPU and RAM, and which upgrade helps most if you fall short.

Sources: Escape Academy 2 on Steam, Launch announcement, Demo update, Release date and specs announcement.