BLOG -- My First Real-Life Room Escape Game Experience

Soooo... this past Sunday evening (which is why this blog is late), I had my first room escape experience -- and it was totally fun!

For those who don't know, a room escape is this kind of game that places a group of people in a room or series of rooms, and they have a set amount of time to solve puzzles and either find a way out of the room or try to finish whatever objectives are given.

Ever since I played this flash game (many, many years ago) called "Crimson Room" (I would embed a link here, but I don't know what the official link is anymore -- and if the official link even works), and then its "sequels" "Viridian Room", "Blue Chamber", and "White Chamber", I've had this sort of fascination with room escape games. It kinda makes me think 'What can I use that's present to get out of a situation? Can I figure a way out?' It was only recently that I found out real-life room escape games existed -- and when an opportunity presented itself to participate in one (and with people I was comfortable with), I took it.

The Little Details
Day: Sunday August 16, 2015
Time: 7:15 PM
Place: Escape Games Toronto (11 Kodiak Crescent, Toronto, Ontario)
Room / Mission: The Haunting of Noriko (7-12 players)
# of People in My Group: 10
Time Limit: About 1 hour
Admission (per person): $22 

Now... I can't really give much detail since I don't want to spoil the experience for anybody, but I will give some kind of overview.

In short, it was a very enjoyable experience. However, since our room was themed "The Haunting of Noriko", I was also very creeped out. Even though some people in my group were kinda expecting more horror elements, I thought what they had was enough to establish an unnerving atmosphere. For certain areas I had my hand up just to block my vision from some of the elements. The unnerving atmosphere also kinda stuck with me for a while after the game ended.

I was pleasantly surprised that we got to explore more than one room, though I couldn't really bring myself to go off exploring on my own. I was just too scared! Hahaha.

Another thing I enjoyed was the amount of puzzles that called for teamwork. I mean, this particular room called for a fairly large group. I think it would be pretty sucky if a group was there to do puzzles could actually be done solo.

It is embarrassing to say... but I screamed once. After watching a couple people solve one of the puzzles, something near me fell and made a huge sound. Haha, jump scare! Hahaha... >_<'''

I can happily say that I contributed to solving at least one puzzle.

Unfortunately, we didn't succeed since we ran out of time. However, since we were on the last puzzle and were on the right track to solving it, we were shown the ending. I'd like to call this the "Consolation Ending", hahaha. I imagine that if we were nowhere close to beating it, we wouldn't have been shown anything (so we'd be able to go back and try again).

One thing I will always remember is while being briefed by a staff member, a loud scream came from one of the rooms. We laughed, as well as the staff member.

All in all, it was a really fun experience and I would totally do it again.


Thanks for reading! If you have any comments / questions, feel free. However, please try to refrain from any kind of spoilers (if you wanted to talk spoilers) for other people's sakes. Have a good rest of the week!