“The game will place players in the shoes of Sam, a freshman at Arbor’s famed, yet mysterious, Academy,” say Pine Studio. “The puzzles will guide the players through the central story of the game and the mystery looming over the school.” The Academy’s new trailer below gives a glance at a few bits like electric statues, water puzzles, a spooky red moon. Pine Studio say that The Academy pulls a lot of inspiration from Hogwarts, of which they’re fans, but also from the architecture of their own city Zagreb in Croatia. You don’t get a great look at the puzzles themselves in the trailer, but The Academy’s Steam page does have a pretty speedy gif showing a bunch of different diagrams that look like maps and geometry puzzles and circuitry and all. It gives me a bit of that edutainment vibe of some learning games from my youth. Hopefully its many puzzles will be a brain workout without going full-on tutor in disguise. “We wanted to make a game that would allow players on all platforms to experience that thrill of getting a puzzle just right,” says The Academy’s project manager Boris Barbir. “Early on in development, it became clear that what we actually set off to achieve was to capture the essence of being a kid - the feeling that adventure lies around every corner.” The Academy will launch over on Steam on Friday, June 19th.
