Escape Academy Guide: How to Beat the Escape Artist Level

In Escape Academy, the appropriately named level “Escape Artist” is an early stage that might stump starting players. Shortly after you’re admitted to the titular Escape Academy, the so-called escape artist named Slip is tasks you with a rite of passage: write your name on a monument in spray paint. While it might seem like a straightforward task at first, reaching the monument is trickier than it seems. Hence this guide to Escape Artist in Escape Academy!

First, here’s a quick reminder: Escape Academy is a timed game. If you stop to look at this guide, make sure the game is properly paused before continuing. You can pause with the Options button on Xbox or the Esc key on PC. Also keep in mind that the inventory screen is not the same as the pause screen. The in-game timer can and will continue unless you correctly pause.

How to Get the Anti Invisible Ink

Step one of this puzzle is to find a simple item. However, this requires finding some other items first. Let’s take it step-by-step!

1. Enter the building to your left. Inside, there are several sketches of a still life portrait, but the stool they’re sketching is mysteriously empty. You have to recreate the scene to find the first clue.
2. Grab the wine from the chair in front of the middle easel.
3. Grab the cheese from the stool next to the easel by the lockers.
4. Open the locker in the middle. Grab the banana from inside.
5. Return to the original stool. Select it, then select the three items you just grabbed to recreate the scene.
6. If you walk behind the recreated scene, you can see that the paint on the cheese, wine, and banana can line up to create three numbers: 139.
7. Go to the rightmost locker and enter “139” to open it. Inside is a jar of Anti Invisible Ink.

Escape Academy Escape Artist Guide: How to Get the Spray Paint

Now we need the very thing Slip asked us to use in the first place: spray paint. Here’s how.

1. Go to the wall opposite the lockers. To the right of those doors is a corner with a sign that says “Caution: wet invisible ink.” Use the Anti Invisible Ink to reveal the hidden paint.
2. There is now a series of paths that connect the switches on the door to some color splotches on the wall. To complete this puzzle, you need to follow the paths from the switch to their respective colors. However, some paths hit a branching point. When this is the case, combine the colors that would go on the switch. For example, if a path leads to the yellow spot and the blue spot, the corresponding switch would need to be marked green.
3. Starting at the top and going down, set the switches to red, purple, yellow and green. The door should swing right open.
4. Head into the office and open the cage farthest from the door. Inside, you’ll find the spray paint.

How to Get the Strange Sculpture

Things finally get pretty tricky right about here. Follow the steps carefully!

1. In order to get to the monument, you need to get through the other locked door in the courtyard. Return to the room with the still life portrait and open the leftmost locker to get the “Open Sesame” Painting.
2. To the left on that same wall is a frame labeled “Open Sesame.” Select it and place the painting inside.
3. The painting will be shredded into strips. This is actually fine, since it wasn’t really in order to begin with. Rearrange the strips to look like the image in the screenshot above.
4. Once the painting is in order, you can see red arrows painted across the art. In order, they face right, left, right, up, down, and down again.
5. Go to the door next to the room the spray paint was in. Select the keypad and enter the arrows in the order listed above. The door will swing open.
6. Inside the room is a safe and a series of seemingly blank canvases on the wall. Use the mounted screen to see the hidden ink on all four paintings. The first three images are monuments from the courtyard: a fountain, a cube statue, and a keyhole statue.
7. Go outside to find the three monuments. Make sure to keep track of their corresponding symbols.
   1. To find the fountain, turn right as soon as you exit the painting room and hug the wall. The fountain is against the wall.
   2. To find the cube statue, exit the painting room and look to the left.
   3. To find the keyhole statue, look in the center of the courtyard. Its symbol is on the side opposite the building with the paintings.
8. Return to the room with the invisible paintings and use the mounted screen on the fourth one. It has a series of symbols in squares that match up with the blank keys on the safe’s keypad.
9. Select the safe and press the keys that match up to the symbols on the monument. It should be as pictured in this next screenshot below:

When the door opens, you’ll find the Strange Sculpture.

Escape Academy Escape Artist Guide: How to Open the Face Door

This next puzzle should be familiar to anyone that took an art class in high school. You don’t really need to know that to proceed, though.

1. The Strange Sculpture is the nose of the door opposite the building you’re currently in. Cross the courtyard, select the face, and select the strange sculpture to attach it. It’ll take more than that to open the door, however.
2. On either side of the main face, there are images of the door face sitting on vases. Each is slightly different. The trick is to find the faces sitting on the vases that look like this image from the safe:

Adjust the face’s mouth, eye, and eyebrow position to match the images on the correct vases. Once you’re done, the face should look like the image below. Select the nose to knock and the door will swing right open!

How to Complete the Statue Room

We’re getting close to the end now. First, we just need some keys.

1. Grab Key #2 and Key #5 from the pedestals on either side of the statue at the center of the room.
2. Each of the three gates have a yellow number painted on the wall next to them; each lock requires two keys. The catch is that the doors can only be opened when you add the numbers on the keys together. For example, the first door you can enter now is Door 7, because the numbers on your keys (2 and 5) add up to the number 7. Insert both keys and open the door.
3. Rotate the statues inside to match the silhouettes on the wall next to the door. It should look like this:

1. A door in the back will open up. Grab Key #3, Key #4, and Key #7.
2. Use Keys #3 and #7 to open the door with a yellow 10 next to it.
3. Break the statues that match the people in the paintings which are in pieces. They’re labeled Timmy (the first one), Michelle (the third one), and Windsor (the fifth one).
4. A door in the back will open up, revealing Key #1. Pick it up.
5. Use your remaining keys to open the door with the yellow 5 next to it.
6. Arrange the statues from shortest to tallest. You can figure it out by looking at the paintings and seeing how the different people compare. For example, the bald man with the beard is taller than a torch, but shorter than a fence. Because the man with glasses is shorter than a torch, you can rank him lower, and because the man with the hat is taller than the fence, you can rank him higher. Here is the correct order:

How to Complete the Level

After finishing the final puzzle in the statue room, a door in the back should open up, revealing a pathway to the monument. Select it and use the Spray Paint to complete the Escape Artist level of Escape Academy and earn The Stencil Badge. Congratulations!  You’re done with this stage and can move on to the next.

Check out our Escape Academy tag for guides on more levels.