Exciting news for all you escape room enthusiasts in Calgary. Arcadia Adventures is moving to a brand new location: March 2025!
Our new location will feature a larger space with a much expanded offering. For those that have been asking for a new escape room to play, you are in luck, as our new location will feature three brand new escape rooms! These rooms will have new themes/stories and are as always, fully designed by our team! The individual rooms will be announced in the coming months, so keep an eye out in the future!
In addition to these new offerings, we will be porting over a few of our existing rooms as well. ‘A Golden Acquisition’ and ‘Ye Olde Horrible Dungeon’ have been player favourites for years, but are also some of our oldest escape rooms. We look forward to bringing these to our new location, revamped and updated for the new space. ‘Dollhouse’, our two-person escape room that opened last year, will be making the trip as well, so don’t worry if you haven’t played it yet. Sadly, ‘Secret of the S.S. Allami’ will be closing with our current location, so this is your last chance to play the room before it’s gone next year.
We have kept an all-time leaderboard since opening our doors in 2016. With the re-design of our older rooms and the addition of new ones, we feel it would not be appropriate to have the same leaderboard track escape times for both locations. As such, our new location will feature new leaderboards from Day 1, giving your team a chance out the gate to get your name at the top! Our current leaderboards will remain active until our existing location closes in February 2025. Once closed, these team boards will be permanently sealed and displayed as an homage to our old location for all to see! If you are looking to get your team enshrined for our legacy rooms, now is the chance before time runs out!
We have been fortunate to spend the last eight years bringing our love of escape rooms to this wonderful city and the many thousands of people that have walked through our doors. Although there have been ups and downs in the past decade, we have enjoyed every minute of the experience and would not trade this job for the world. We are working tirelessly behind the scenes so our new location will continue to bring the same joy and excitement you expect from Arcadia Adventures. We are so grateful for your support and none of this would be possible without all of you!
-The Arcadia Adventures Escape Room Team
Arcadia Adventures Escape Room is Calgary’s premier escape room experience. Our real-life Calgary escape room is an excellent way to have fun, solve puzzles, and improve your team-building skills. Our rooms can host parties, small groups, families, couples, and is great as a team-building activity for Calgary businesses. Book your spot at our one of our Calgary escape rooms online or by contacting us on 587-356-0440.
Hello fellow adventurers! Welcome back to the Arcadian: the premier blog about all things for Calgary escape rooms. Today we are gonna teach you how to make an escape room at home. Birthday parties, bachelorette/bachelor parties, Christmas – you name it! These tips will help you make an unforgettable experience at home for friends and family!
A common question we have from a lot of people is how can they design escape rooms at home. Just a bit of history for you all – that is actually how we started! Two brothers wanted to create a cool bachelor party for their friend that wasn’t a typical bachelor party. Together, they designed a scavenger hunt escape room for the group to play. The event was spread across Calgary, and the bachelor party was split into two teams, racing to the finish! The day was filled with laughter, cars breaking down, confused waitresses, but best of all it was full of unforgettable memories. Now let us help you design your very own experience for the special people around you!
Step 1: Planning
The beauty of creating these puzzles and adventures at home is that you can cater them to the people around you. Also, you only need a puzzle to work once, so you can create destructible puzzles which are rarely seen in an escape room. Start by choosing a theme. It could be pirate themed, a heist, National Treasure – your imagination is the limit. You can choose any theme but we suggest choosing one that is most likely to resonate with your group.
Once you have a theme, you can start planning out locations. Our bachelor escape room experience was across Calgary, but if you are planning this for a kids party you might want to pick a smaller and safer location, such as a local park or a backyard / house. If you choose private businesses as a location be sure to contact them beforehand so they know what you’re up to! If you want to have them all work on it at the dinner table you can do that too. The beauty of this is it is all up to you how big this adventure room experience is!
Plan your event on paper first
One of the most important parts of planning is planning your end. For our group we had an ending similar to National Treasure, where once the groups had completed their tasks they would be led back to the starting location at a house. Once there, they had to say a phrase and the garage door would open showing a horde of treasure and goodies for everyone to take home! This was done simply by having one of us waiting in the garage and listening for the correct phrase, and once they said it we simply opened the door! Be sure to choose an end that is special to your group, whether that be back at the start, a special place, or with a special surprise or prize.
Step 2: Puzzles
This is one of the hardest parts for a lot of people. Creating fun puzzles is hard, but making puzzles that resonate with your group can be even harder. We suggest sticking to some easy puzzles to start – here are three ideas to get you started.
Using a scavenger hunt style map is an easy way for your players to keep track of their progress and keep them on the right trail. Your map could point to particular locations that your group has to visit, solve puzzles at, and retrieve a clue or item from. Your map could leave out the names of specific places, and instead part of every puzzle is figuring out where to go next, until they reach the final location.
Riddles are readily available online for any theme or topic, and are a common enough puzzle that can be adjusted for any age or difficulty. The answer to the riddle could be a clue to the next location, where your group can find a hidden clue, or you can use that word as a part of a bigger puzzle.
Code puzzles come in a variety of forms – ciphers, unscrambling words or numbers, putting together puzzle pieces are all approachable ways to make fun puzzles for your players. Some of your code puzzles could be individual parts of your escape room experience, or players may collect a component of a code over the course of the whole adventure to solve at the end!
Locks can be a key component to your puzzles, especially if your puzzles are in a public place where you may not want strangers opening your boxes. School directional or combination locks, bike locks, or key locks are all cheap and easy to obtain locks. If you need more ideas for different types of puzzles, and different types of locks, check out our previous two articles on puzzles and locks.
Step 3: Creating Props
Prop creation for escape rooms at home is actually pretty straightforward – you won’t need anything crazy except for some paper, a couple shoeboxes, paint or coloured pencils, and your imagination! Focus on making the end of the event the most immersive part; the steps and puzzles to get there can be simply made on some paper and hidden around your chosen areas.
Hidden Compartment in a Book
If you have a printer, you can use free services like Krita to help make your puzzle clues fancier! YouTube is your best friend when it comes to getting the most out of material around your house, so make sure you explore the maker-space and search for people who make things close to your theme! When it comes to boxes to hide clues in we suggest tool boxes or tackle boxes as they usually have a loop that you can use to lock without having to use extra hardware.
Step 4: Complete the Escape Room at Home!
The day has come to host your at home escape room! You need to make sure you have a plan for the day: where you are placing clues, a map so your players know where to go if they are travelling by car, and make sure your ending is all ready to go! It is possible to run this escape room as an individual, but having a friend or two to help you place props and clues and to be waiting at the end point is a great way to reduce stress and make sure things are in order. A few more things for you to consider are how you will stay in touch with your group(s) if you want to, how you will or won’t provide hints, and outlining rules that your group should follow to stay on track and keep it a safe and fun experience.
Congratulations, you have all the knowledge you need to go forth and create your own escape room adventure! Heed our advice, pick a great group of friends, and enjoy watching them have a great escape room experience!
Arcadia Adventures Escape Room is Calgary’s premier escape room experience. Our real-life Calgary escape room is an excellent way to have fun, solve puzzles, and improve your team-building skills. Our rooms can host parties, small groups, families, couples, and is great as a team-building activity for Calgary businesses. Book your spot at our one of our Calgary escape rooms online or by contacting us on 587-356-0440.
Hello fellow adventurers! Welcome back to the Arcadian: the premier blog about all hings for Calgary escape rooms. If you like escape rooms, board games, video games, or other nerdy hobbies, I’m willing to bet you’ve played or heard of Dungeons & Dragons! Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, and Call of Cthulhu are all popular tabletop roleplaying games that both give inspiration to and draw inspiration from locked rooms. These tabletop roleplaying games often integrate puzzles, riddles, and dungeons into different encounters that players experience. Reminisce on your favorite Calgary escape room experiences and step up your Game Master game!
Escape Rooms are Dungeons!
Having difficulty imagining what kind of dungeon crawl your players are going to have next? Think of your favorite adventure rooms, and recreate them right within your campaign setting! This is especially effective if the escape rooms you have done are multiple rooms. But, even single-room escape rooms can serve as inspiration for part of the dungeon, or stretch out your favourite escape room into multiple rooms and chambers in your game. Keep the theme the same, or change it to suit your unique world’s needs!
Linear vs Nonlinear Styles
Escape rooms can have lots of different formats and ways that puzzles are coordinated. The main two locked room experiences tend to be linear – when you MUST solve one puzzle before going onto the next – and nonlinear – when there are multiple puzzles you can solve at once. If your characters are diving into a super secure lab or wizard’s tower, linear is a great way to emulate security measures or rooms that are one right after another. If your characters are perusing a mad alchemist’s messy workshop, or are exploring an abandoned mine, nonlinear would provide the experience of group investigation that everyone can play a part in. Changing it up between linear and nonlinear are excellent ways to diversify your Game Master expertise!
Borrowing Puzzles
You might not be able to remember word for word the trapped room puzzles and riddles you faced and struggled with – and if you can, good for you! – but even thinking about the different kinds of puzzles can be helpful in designing your own. Integrating rune-based deciphering puzzles into your Dwarven stronghold dungeon crawl, codebreaking into your sci-fi ship takeover, or artsy pattern puzzles into your Elvish castle heist are all great starts. Diversifying your puzzles is important to give a full-rounded experience. Make sure you don’t rely on just one or two puzzles – escape rooms never have just one or two puzzles!
Copy That Aha! Moment
Picture this: You and your friends are playing in a tough trapped room, and after a long effort with tons of tries and creative ideas, you finally figure out the puzzle. Aha! You input the answer into your lock, crack it open, and feel that fantastic wave of joy and relief. When you translate an escape room into a dungeon, don’t just hand your players the puzzles. Descriptions are still very important! Give your players a sense of the dungeon with detailed, sense-based descriptions, describe how the puzzles are embedded into your dungeon, and be sure that when they solve something, reward them with that glorious Aha! moment when they crack that puzzle. Or, ask your players to describe how their character goes about solving this puzzle in their own special way to make them create that Aha! moment.
Whether you are new to tabletop roleplaying games like D&D, or an experienced veteran, there is always room to improve your dungeon-crawl and puzzle game. Even looking through puzzle room websites to see what kinds of themes there are and reading their descriptions could be a great opportunity to inspire your next session. Next time you feel the need to endlessly peruse Google for inspiration and resources for your next dungeon crawl or puzzle, instead, direct your creative mind back in time to your favorite escape room experiences! Better yet… Why not really inspire yourself by going to one of Calgary’s many fantastic escape rooms? It’s for research purposes, right?…
Arcadia Adventures Escape Room is Calgary’s premier escape room experience. Our real-life Calgary escape room is an excellent way to have fun, solve puzzles, and improve your team-building skills. Our rooms can host parties, small groups, families, couples, and is great as a team-building activity for Calgary businesses. Book your spot at our one of our Calgary escape rooms online or by contacting us on 587-356-0440.
Hello fellow adventurers, welcome back to the Arcadian: the premier blog for all things escape rooms! Today, we explore how locking groups of people into tiny rooms became so popular. Nowadays, real-life escape rooms are embedded in popular culture, even spawning a movie in the process. But where did it all start? Why do people love escape rooms so much and how did it take root in Calgary? Let’s take a trip through history and find out how we got here.
Precursors to Escape Rooms
In the early days of computer gaming, the preeminent genre was the point-and-click adventure. These games featured players progressing though a game via finding items, solving puzzles and discovering new locations. The most famous example of this type of game is Myst (1993), which featured a protagonist exploring a strange island with mysterious teleporting books and abstract puzzles. The game is unique in that it features no enemies, no combat and the only goal is to solve the mystery; a trait that would become a hallmark of the genre.
Screenshot from Myst (1993)
Myst is considered the forefather of the modern day escape rooms. While it does not strictly take place in a single room, many of the concepts, gameplay and ideas found later can be traced back to this game. Myst cannot claim to be the earliest iteration of the puzzle computer game, but it is certainly the most successful and is still considered one of the best selling games of all time.
The Flash Games Revolution
The advent of Adobe Flash allowed indie developers to produce their own games without requiring the resources of an entire studio. With websites such as Newgrounds.com aggregating and distributing this content, anyone who had Flash on their computer could simply navigate to the desired page and play for free; without the need of additional installation or effort. This ease of accessibility opened the floodgates for animators, music videos, and game developers to flex their creative muscles and led to the first iteration of the escape rooms games we see today.
The term ‘escape the room’ came into prevalence with the Flash game ‘Mystery of Time and Space’ by Jan Albartus. Similar to Myst, MOTAS (2001) featured a protagonist exploring a strange otherworldly place and progressing by finding items and solving the logical puzzles that lead to the next location. Unlike Myst, which had an entire island open for exploration at the start, MOTAS had levels, each featuring a room/discrete location that had to be solved in its entirety before moving on to the next. While this allowed the developer to update the game by adding levels without the need to touch existing ones, the need to solve each level/room independently would coin the idea of ‘escaping the room’ and would become the central feature of the games that would follow.
Screenshot from ‘Mystery of Time and Space’ (2001)
Other Notable Puzzle Room Games
This concept was most distinctively showcased in ‘The Crimson Room’ (2004) by Toshimitsu Takagi. ‘The Crimson Room’ took the concept to it’s furthest extreme, with the entire game taking place in a single blood red room with sparse furniture and an ominous door that needed to be unlocked. Unlike the static environments of MOTAS, the game is unique in that the player character stands in the middle of the room and the first person viewpoint is changed, similar to how a person would actually turn their head in an escape room. Combined with it’s unsettling atmosphere and intuitive controls, ‘The Crimson Room’ is the closest Flash game of this period that parallels the experience of modern day real-life escape rooms.
Screenshot from ‘The Crimson Room’ (2004)
Another example from this time is Mateusz Skutnik’s ‘Submachine’ (2005). This game had the player explore an expansive ‘Submachine’, a strange otherworldly structure with retrofuturistic technology. ‘Submachine’ is unique in the flash ‘escape the room’ era in that the game also told a story; with characters and lore that would develop throughout the ten entries of the series. In that respect, Submachine is similar to the storytelling of Myst and it’s sequels. Of the examples listed here, Submachine is still being worked on today by its creator and a remastered version is planned soon for release on Steam.
Screenshot from ‘Submachine 5: The Root’ (2008)
From Digital to Reality
With the popularity of its online brethren, it was only a matter of time before the jump was made to reality. One where a player could immerse themselves physically and solve puzzles with friends in a multitude of themHed rooms.
The first real-life escape room in the world is a debated topic. ‘Real Escape Game’ claims to be the first iteration of the industry, hosting escape rooms that took place in locations across Japan. Hungary’s Parapark claims to be the first escape room worldwide and still operates in their original location today. ‘Real Escape Game’ would come to America in 2011. ‘Puzzle Break’, the first American owned escape room, would open in Seattle a year later. From there, the industry exploded to the phenomenon it is today, with an estimated 50,000 escape rooms operating worldwide.
Escape Rooms in Calgary
If you play an escape room in Calgary you have probably heard them referred to by another name: “Locked Rooms”. This is because the first escape room that opened in Calgary was called “The Locked Room” and their brand has become synonymous with escape rooms in Calgary
From 2014-2015, six companies would be a part of the first wave of escape rooms that opened in Calgary:
Since then, there has been a hiatus of new rooms opening in the city. You may also notice that while many of the businesses on this list are no longer operating. Sadly the Covid-19 pandemic would see many of these locations close as lockdowns would keep escape room businesses closed for total of nine months in the span of two years. As the industry returns to its feet, it is hopeful that the escape room scene continues to grow in Calgary, with businesses continuing to the push the limit of experience, puzzles and design just as their counterparts did in the past.
Arcadia Adventures Escape Room is Calgary’s premier escape room experience. Our real-life Calgary escape rooms are an excellent way to have fun, solve puzzles, and improve your team-building skills. Our rooms can host parties, small groups, families, couples, and is great as a team-building activity for Calgary businesses. Book your spot at our escape room in Calgary online or by contacting us on 587-356-0440.
