If you haven’t had the opportunity to try an escape room yourself, there’s no doubt that you’ve at least heard about them from friends or family or even from the media since escape rooms have become a craze and people love to share their experiences. Currently, there are over 2,800 escape rooms worldwide and they offer several different experiences; they come in all shapes, sizes, and themes to appeal to a broad audience and can accommodate anywhere from 2 to 20 players at a time making each escape experience unique.
Common Fears
People have various reasons for avoiding escape rooms, some fear suffering claustrophobia, or tell us that they’re worried they won’t be able to solve the puzzles. A lot of people are also worried that they’ll fail. But like any experience, your first escape room is an adventure and the more often you play, the better you get. Like riding your first roller coaster, once you try it, you’ll be hooked! If you’re worried about failing; welcome to the club! You won’t always solve the game, but the challenge and the ability to try again some other time is part of the fun. As for anyone worried about being locked in, at Escape Games Canada we never lock you in for your safety, so you can play with piece of mind knowing you can leave anytime you need to.
Arrival and Setup
When you arrive at Escape Games Canada, the rules will be outlined by friendly staff and they’ll show you where to enter your chosen game (we have several to choose from). Your group has the chance to ask any questions in the lobby before your Game Master takes you into the room and the introduction video will begin. This video not only outlines our safety rules, but also the basic premise of the game, the backstory, and maybe some subtle hints. Once this has finished, your group has one hour to explore the room and solving puzzles and challenges to advance through each successive space in the game. Some escape rooms offer you hints from a staff member if you’re just not making any headway. Most escape rooms will offer a range of riddles or logic games to help lead you to solve the room’s mystery. They’re a great time for families, groups of friends or even a fantastic tool for companies to build teamwork and staff morale.
What to Expect
Escape rooms come in a variety of themes, from horror to modern day adventures to time traveling. There are escape rooms that are for adults only, and others set up challenges that will appeal to all ages. The vast majority of players are young adults, but people from all walks of life will enjoy taking part in this type of teamwork-building activity. This is why many businesses are opting to take their team out to an escape room for a corporate event. It forces players to work together, but still fun and exciting enough to keep players entertained.
The forced social aspect is the best part of playing an escape room. Other common group activities (Paintball, laser tag, etc.) leave a lot of room for a player to go lone wolf and forget the rest of the team, but you can’t do that when you’re playing an escape room. There is no top player when you play an escape room, the whole team shares their score, and if you all escape, you definitely feel closer to one another by the end!
If you haven’t been to an escape room yet, what are you waiting for?!