What Escape Simulator is
Escape Simulator is a first-person puzzler where you walk through escape rooms and interact with almost everything in them. You can move furniture, pick up objects, read books, examine artifacts, smash pots and break locks. If something is not nailed to the wall, you can pick it up. The built-in set contains 28 rooms designed by real-life escape room operators, and the rooms are grouped into packs: Labyrinth of Egypt, Adrift in Space, Edgewood Mansion and Omega Corporation. There are also extras like a Portal themed room, the Among Us spaceship, Santa's Workshop, Cats in Time, a Graveyard, a 70's Room, Leonardo da Vinci's workshop, The Island and a Versus room where you play against your friends.
Playing together
Every room can be played in online co-op, so you and your friends join the same room and work the puzzles together. The built-in rooms are recommended for up to 3 players, though you can bring more. Community rooms have been tested with up to 10 people. You customize your character before joining, and you can pin a clue to the screen so everyone can see it while someone else checks another part of the room. Clues often need cross-referencing, which is where splitting up pays off: one person reads through books while another examines ancient artifacts. There is also a Versus room for playing against each other instead of alongside each other.
Community rooms and the editor
The game ships with a room editor, so you can build your own escape rooms and puzzles and share them through workshop integration. More than 4000 community rooms are available to play, which means the content keeps going long after the 28 built-in rooms are done. Quality varies from room to room, so expect some to be tighter than others.
Before you start
This is a puzzle game first: expect to read, look closely at objects and try combinations rather than fight or run. It works solo, but the co-op mode is where the group format shines, since more people means more eyes on the clues. Bring patience for rooms that hide their next step in a book or a small detail on an object, and use the pin feature whenever a clue needs to stay visible while you search somewhere else.