Paradox Project - The Music Academy [Review]

The Music Academy is one of the best escape rooms in Athens, Greece. Here are our recommendations for other great escape rooms in Athens.

High note

Location: Athens, Greece

Date Played: February 26, 2025

Team size: 4-7; we recommend 3-4 (contact them to play with less than 4 players)

Duration: 180+ minutes

Price: from 33€ per player for teams of 4 to 27€ per player for teams of 7

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: All players have to step up and down a couple of stairs.

Emergency Exit Rating: We were locked in various spaces within the game. We’re unsure what fire escape measures there were, if any.

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

2025 Golden Lock Award Winner

“Set within an actual former music school, The Music Academy – like all of Paradox Project’s epic games – dared to present deep, layered puzzles. The gameplay was more challenging than we typically find in the escape room world.”

REA Reaction

Paradox Project has a reputation for crafting some of the finest layered and complex, yet solvable puzzles in the escape room world. They have a style of blending those challenging puzzles with detailed and extensive storytelling that feels uniquely their own Paradox Project 3, The Music Academy, followed in that tradition.

A red window barred up with black metal and a treble clef.

Set within an actual retired music school, Paradox Project used the authenticity of the gamespace to flesh out a world that felt strange yet real (seriously, some of the aesthetic choices of the original music school owners were really interesting.)

For those that have played Paradox Project’s other games, The Music Academy didn’t have the same over-the-top quality of The Bookstore. Instead, it brought an intensity of puzzle-play that continued for the entire 3-hour game clock. Purely as a puzzler, I’m not sure that I have ever enjoyed an escape room’s puzzle-set more than I did in The Music Academy. If you love puzzles, The Music Academy is worth traveling for.

Who is this for?

Adventure seekers
Story seekers
Puzzle lovers
Scenery snobs
Best for players with at least some experience

Why play?

Wonderful, novel, and layered puzzles
It was set in a beautiful, old music school
A brilliant end sequence

Story

We set out to explore an old music school that hid a dark secret.

Closeup of a stone panel with he faces of children singing, below them is musical notation.

Setting

The Music Academy was set within an actual old music school. Paradox Project put the remnants of the school to incredible use, working the classroom spaces and unusual decor into the fabric of the game world.

While some wear showed, the space was well-maintained and felt deeply authentic.

A violin hung on the wall beside an old radio.

Gameplay

Paradox Project’s The Music Academy was a standard escape room with a high level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, making connections, and solving deeply layered puzzles.

The exterior of a music school, the window has a treble clef in the center.

Analysis

➕ The puzzles were the highlight of The Music Academy. They were unusual, creative, and woven into the set and world of this actual music academy building. They balanced aha moments with satisfying processes. Everything solved cleanly.

➕ The set was as authentic as it gets, considering this building was a former music academy. The building was ornate in some pretty strange ways, which enhanced the atmosphere. Paradox Project used the oddities of the rooms to their advantage in puzzle design.

➖ Some areas of the set were heavily worn. In one instance, props for one puzzle seemed all too relevant to another puzzle in the same space, and it was obvious that many previous teams had tried to force interactions. Prop retouching could also include upgrading from laminated paper cluing to be on par with the many interesting objects we interacted with throughout the game.

➕ Paradox Project took risks with how many of their puzzled flowed, introducing an element in different ways, each time to great effect.

➖ Given the complexity of one late-game prop, we wondered if the puzzle inside had perhaps been simplified from an earlier implementation. It left us looking for more.

➕ We adored when an item from early on became relevant much, much later. These moments were beautifully signposted, so as to make us feel especially clever in our ahas.

➖/➕ The story was predominantly told through video (with subtitles for English-speaking players). This wasn’t optimal. However, later in the experience, the storytelling was better integrated.

➕/➖ The Music Academy was one of the few games in Greece where we weren’t locked in… except for one late-game segment. It would not be complicated for Paradox Project to integrate an emergency release on this segment, and they really ought to figure out how to do it.

➕ While The Music Academy was predominantly a puzzle game, our adventure wasn’t as straightforward as it may have initially appeared. Paradox Project’s late-game surprise added intensity and excitement, which says a lot considering we’d been puzzling hard for almost 3 hours.

Tips For Visiting

You don’t need any musical ability to solve the puzzles in this escape room.
We think there was street parking, but we aren’t sure.
Check out nearby Ramona Tavern Kalithea (Ραμόνα Ταβέρνα Καλλιθέα) for an authentic, family friendly Greek meal.

Book your hour with Paradox Project’s The Music Academy, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Book The Music Academy

Disclosure: Paradox Project comped our tickets for this game.

If you enjoy The Music Academy, we hope you’ll check out our interview with creator Dimitris Varelas on The Reality Escape Pod.