Name: Calgary Escape Room
Address: Calgary, Alberta, Canada, AB
Telephone: 587-356-0440

As a family, trying to find something that everyone enjoys can be hard. If you’re looking for something that everyone can be engaged in, then you should consider escape rooms in Calgary. It’s a fun activity for all ages and does a great job of getting everyone involved. Here are some specifics on why going to escape rooms will be the perfect solution.

4 Reasons Why An Escape Room In Calgary Is For The Family

It Promotes Teamwork

One of the main reasons your family will enjoy escape rooms is because it promotes teamwork. These challenging rooms require everyone to play a part so that you can escape or solve the puzzle. You will rarely find team building activities in Calgary that really brings your family together in the same way escape rooms will.

It’s Something New

It’s likely that you’ve done a lot of the same old things you always do with your family. Why not try a novel experience? Escape rooms are unlike anything you’ve ever done. They put you in a unique environment that’s immersive, mysterious, and challenging, while also being fun, interesting, and unique.

Your Family Will Get a Sense of Accomplishment

It’s not every day where you take your family to an outing and leave like they accomplished something. Because everyone in the escape room contributes to the goal, it really feels like everyone is adding value. The challenging rooms also make everyone feel like they’ve overcome barriers to reach victory.

There are Many Varieties

Escape rooms in Calgary are not just limited to one or two rooms. There are multiple rooms with different themes, difficulties, strategies, and designs. This will keep your family busy for hours. The variety will keep your family entertained even after solving the puzzle for the first room.

To sum up, escape rooms can be the perfect outing for your family. They’re fun, challenging, team building, and unique. They are engaging to both kids and adults. You won’t have to deal with a situation where one person will get bored because he or she didn’t find it interesting enough. It’s the perfect family activity.

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 one of our Calgary escape rooms by contacting us on 587-356-0440.

Looking for some fun Halloween events this season? One of the most unique things you can do is to try out escape rooms in Calgary. Escape rooms are one of a kind experiences where you are given a set of challenges to escape the room you are put in. You’ll have to discover clues, solve puzzles, and use your creativity to succeed. But there’s more to it than merely escaping…

It Is Family Friendly

It’s a fun way to spend your Halloween with your friends and family. These escape rooms are designed to be played with multiple people. You are given a limited amount of time to escape the room and that’s why you’ll need to work with your teammates to solve the puzzle before time runs out.

Great For Team-Bonding

If you’re a business owner or the head of an organization, you’ll find escape rooms to be one of the more fun team building activities in Calgary. It’s not formal, competitive, or boring which makes it a great way for your team members to really enjoy themselves while also building strong bonds.

Different Themes For Different People

What makes these escape rooms so interesting is the fact that there are many different themes to choose from. So if you manage to beat one of the escape rooms, you can try your hand at the other themes. Obviously, the themes will be based on Halloween. However, each room will have many differences.

You’ll find that the puzzles, clues, and strategies will be different for each room. Some themes will also require more team work than others. And of course, some themes will be more challenging than others. As you can imagine, the different themed escape rooms will keep you engaged for hours.

You Get To Play Detective On Halloween Night!

Most people really enjoy these escape rooms because it puts them in the role of playing detective. It is one of the most mentally stimulating, unique and challenging roles they’ll ever experience. The Halloween theme also adds elements of horror, suspense, and mystery which heightens the whole escape room event experience.

So if you’re looking for something unique this Halloween, try looking for an escape room in Calgary. Your entire party will be talking about it for months to come.

The most important thing when completing a Calgary escape room is to make sure you have fun! But like most of us we all love to win, here are a few ways that’ll help you beat the clock while still having the best escape room experience.

4 Tips To Complete Your Escape Rooms On Time

Keep That Same Energy

Escape rooms can be long and require excessive thinking or moving. As time goes by a few team members may get frustrated and lose energy, but that must not be the reason you don’t beat the clock. Keep all of your team members excited and energetic, because of the more energy, the better. Keep that same energy you walked into the escape room with!

Divide and conquer

One useful tip is to divide your team members. Have each individual be in charge of a section; this prevents the loss of energy due to overlooking the same thing someone already has. Dividing and conquering allow your team to find more clues a lot easier, and that makes everything more fun. The more clues you see and the closer you get to victory makes your escape room experience more entertaining.

Choose A Leader

Poor communication is the main reason why teams fail. When you plan your next Calgary escape room adventure, keep in mind who you’d want to be the leader. This does not mean that this individual boss everyone around although he or she will gather all the information the other teammates find and map out what you’ll need and what you already have including keeping track of the time your group has remaining. This is a helpful technique that will get your team ahead of the clock.

Choose a group of people that work well together

One of the most important things is to attend a Calgary escape room with individuals who you enjoy being around, the more positive energy, the better. The best way to beat the clock is if you are surrounded by a group of people who communicate well together, the best teams are made up of diverse minds. When everyone thinks the same, it narrows down your collective consciousness. Find people who have their own unique strengths from creative to analytical thinkers. Leave your pride and ego at the door because every minute counts so there will be no time for arguments. Before attending an escape room, make sure to establish common grounds and rules that all members respect, this will invite a smooth and productive experience.

Working with a team to complete an escape room in Calgary can be a challenge, but not if you follow along with the tips provided. Doing so, will give you the best chance to get out of your escape room.

5 Tips When Working Together In A Calgary Escape Room

Pass The Baton

If you’ve noticed that you have spent a whole lot of time on a puzzle, and have not found a solution to it, it is time to hand it off to another teammate. They might be able to see something that you can’t, or they might be able to connect the dots that you’ve provided so you can solve the puzzle together. Don’t take it as an insult that you couldn’t finish it. You’ll most likely be able to complete another mystery in a Caglary escape room.

Listen To All Your Teammates’ Ideas

Communication is vital to escape room success. Without it, you are not going to complete the room, and in most cases, you’ll fall apart as a team (its why it’s considered a sought-after team-building activity in Calgary for businesses). A crucial part of working together is listening to your teammates. Regardless of how crazy their idea is when it comes to solving a riddle, listen to them. They might be a few steps away from cracking open the case, and if they aren’t, you’ve at least tried something outside the box.

Get Loud!

Yes, this might spread chaos quickly, but escape rooms are won by the team that is most open with their communication. If you find something that can break open a clue, scream it out loud! Let everyone know what you’ve discovered and how it might help along with the other clues your team has found.

Search & Spread Out

Quickly mark out the prospect puzzle points in the room. When you have that settled, break up into teams and focus on each puzzle. That way, each team member is able to focus on a puzzle, ensuring each problem gets a pair of eyes on them. If you all focus on one puzzle, you might miss the opportunity to figure out easier ones.

Be A Player, Not A Spectator

It’s too easy to be a spectator in a Calgary escape room, so if you feel that you’re just clamping around the group and focusing on the same puzzle, spread out. It is more effective as a team if you decide to start to solve a problem yourself. You will be surprised at what you might find, and that you might help connect the dots to another puzzle that your team is working on.

If you are thinking about getting your employees out of the office for a team building activity in Calgary, look no further than going to an escape room. Here is what your workers can experience (and how your business can benefit!).

5 Benefits For Going to An Escape Room For Your Corporate Party

Better Communication

When it comes to getting out of a Calgary escape room in time, communication is vital. Only by talking openly, will you be able to get out of the room. These communication building exercises will transfer over to the workplace as employees will know the value of communicating, and more so, how to communicate with individual workers.

Improves Productivity

When the morale of employees increases, they are more motivated and dedicated to their work, thereby increasing productivity. Escape rooms in Calgary are great fun and will motivate the employees, so once they’re back to the office, they’ll promptly jump right back into work.

Improves Relationships Within The Company

Team building activities are great when it comes to improving the relationship between workers. Some employees might not spend enough time at work together, so they struggle to bond. But after being trapped in a Calgary escape room for an hour, they’ll bond over beating the clock. As a result, employees will get to know each other better than ever.

Leadership Standouts

Once the employees have settled into their teams for the escape rooms, employees will settle into their roles. It is through these roles that you will be able to see who is the leader in the pack. Just be careful not to confuse bossy with leadership skills. Keep an eye on how who can deliver the leadership qualities you need for your business.

Create A Positive Fun Break For Your Employees

Breaking routine in the office is a great way to spice up your employees. Too often being stuck in the same nine-to-five routine can be draining for your workers. But getting them out of the office and getting active can provide a high kick of energy to their wellness and their positiveness in the office.

Are you looking for something challenging and fun to do this weekend? How does an escape room in Calgary sound to you? Well, if that piques your interest, you should give it a go!

But you shouldn’t just go to any escape room. You have to go a great escape room; one that is both fun and challenging, and also puts you in a completely different world. This is what makes a great escape room in Calgary.

5 Things That Make A Great Escape Room In Calgary

Narrow storytelling within the room
Not only do you want to be lost in the room, but you also want to be engulfed in the storytelling. Being part of the ‘world’ that the room creates is fantastic, but you also want to be lost within the story of that world. It adds another dimension to the room and makes you feel engrossed in it. Storytelling is a big part of what makes an escape room great.
The Decor Of The Room
The more realistic and in-depth the room looks, the better off it will be for the overall experience. Cheap-looking sets and rooms come off as a fake and does not bode well for visitors. The more creative and purposeful the decor of the room, the more engaging it will be for users.
A Good Mix Of Puzzles
You don’t want to do the same puzzles over and over again. It is tedious and uninspiring. You want to find you and your team sorting out a mix of different puzzles that are new and challenging each time. A diverse array of problems makes your escape room all that more exciting.
Invites Teamwork
Escape rooms are great as team building activities in Calgary. So there is even more of an emphasis on ensuring that the escape room invites teamwork. You don’t want one person to do sort out all the puzzles; you want the whole team being engaged to solve the puzzle.
Challenging, Yet Accomplishable
There is challenging, and there is ‘challenging’. While some Calgary escape rooms are harder than others, you have to have a chance on accomplishing them. People don’t want to continually fail time and time again when it comes to escape rooms. The escape room has to be a delicate balance of challenging yet achievable.

Welcome to our new series, where we look at the intricacies of designing an escape room from start to finish. Since we create all our escape rooms in house at Arcadia Adventures Escape Room, we’ve learned quite a few tricks along the way and pitfalls to avoid. We hope that these guides will be useful to other aspiring designers or those interested in the behind the scenes of Escape Rooms.

For this first article in the series, we will start with the seed of all escape rooms: Theme. A theme is the overriding designing principle that everything else in the pre-production process will revolve around, including puzzles, interior design, difficulty, prop build, electronic work, etc. It is usually summarized in a single sentence that begins with “Wouldn’t it be cool…?”

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could steal an artifact from a museum?” Wouldn’t it be cool to have a race between a horde of zombies and desperate scientists?” ” Wouldn’t it be cool to escape a dungeon filled with magical fairy-tales?”

The theme is typically the first thing designers imagine; however, it is fully extracting the best gameplay and potential that is difficult. From our experience, here are our Do’s and Dont’s when it comes to choosing a Theme:

DON’T BE SATISFIED WITH CLICHE

The worst thing you can do with an idea is to take the surface layer of a concept and start production right away. Take some time to explore the idea and how you can make it interesting. Suppose your idea is a bank heist. You could design a vault and give players 60 minutes to escape. But what if you approached it from another angle? Players are cops and must find a way into a vault within 60 minutes before the thieves escape. What possibility does that open up? How do the puzzles change? Is this a fresh take or a gimmick? At this stage, look for different angles and get your creative juices flowing. Don’t be satisfied with genre clichés.

DO RESEARCH YOUR THEME

That being said, do research your theme so you get a better concept of the possibility of your idea. Look for pictures online that match the feeling and design you want your room to have. Watch movies, read books, play video games based on your theme and look for things you can use for your own design. In the example of the heist room, one movie that comes to mind is Ocean’s Eleven. As they plan and pull off the elements of the heist, could you make a puzzle out of each part? What about having players crawl through a vent to get to a secret door? Is the design of the casino what you are looking for or do you want something closer to an actual vault like Inside Man? Research, research, research.

DON’T FORCE YOUR PUZZLES

I’ve been to countless rooms where the atmosphere is perfect, the lighting is spot on and the music sets the mood. We’re ready to tackle the challenge and the puzzles we come across have nothing to do with the theme. In fact, they could easily be transported to another room and nothing would change. Why go through all the work designing a room to look and feel great but the actual gameplay feels tacked on. Our trick is to take an element of our theme and see if we can create a puzzle out of it, not vice versa. For the heist example, could we make a puzzle out of the players gathering valuables from the vault? Maybe some are fake and they have to figure out which ones are correct? Maybe they need to divide the loot correctly into the right bags. Take a concept and see if you can squeeze gameplay out of it. If you can do this with every puzzle in your room, you will have successfully integrated gameplay and theme in your escape room.

DO COMBINE IDEAS WHEN STUCK

Even the best ideas can become stagnant once researched and explored. Many times we’ve come up with a theme that we were sure was going to be our next room, only to walk back to the drawing board when we fully explored the concept. The good news is that not much time is lost in this early stage. The second good news is when faced with a handful of decent but not great ideas, smash them together and see what happens. Maybe a bank heist feels too boring. What if you combine it with an equally boring outer space theme. A bank heist in space? That might be interesting, having the players board a cargo vessel, each with a role to get past the ships security systems. But of course, there’s an AI watching so they would have to disable that and…the possibilities are endless.

These are just some tips to help in this most crucial process. While puzzle design, set dressing, gameplay flow can offer difficult challenges, there’s nothing worse than going through that knowing the theme just isn’t clicking for you. Take your time at the start. Nail down the concept and relax. At this stage, everything can be easily be changed if it doesn’t work. When your group stumbles upon that theme that they just can’t stop talking about, you’ll know you have a winner.

Have fun!

The tricky thing about finding fun activities the whole family can enjoy is that the difference in ages, life experiences, and definitions of what’s “cool” make for very different tastes! What a 10 year old enjoys will usually be pretty different to what a 17 year old likes, and that will be different from what a 21 year old enjoys… Talk about a tall order. But there is one activity that is good, challenging fun for all ages: Puzzles! (And, as such, puzzle rooms). Playing an escape room offers families a chance to be present with one another, communicate constructively, and work together. Depending on the age range of the players, there are a few factors that should be considered when you’re deciding on the right escape room adventure for your family.

Puzzle Rooms with Kids

Being immersed in the story is one of the best ways for your kids to enjoy the experience, have fun, and get into character! Are you detectives, wizards, or thieves? Play up the theme of the room, create your own stories and uncover mysteries together. We’ve had families show up in full costume with their kids and everyone loved it – especially the adults! There are many different types of puzzles for children to play and enjoy, each with their own unique design. There are some escape puzzles that rely on the sense of touch, others that require players to find missing pieces or investigate and search the room. (We recently wrote a blog post on the types of escape room puzzles and designs, so feel free to check it out to learn more.) The key is to allow your kids to try things first. Let them take the lead in searching for clues, holding the flashlight, or opening key locks. If they’re fairly young then you’ll probably be assisting them with most of the puzzles, so give them every opportunity to be involved!

Escape Rooms with Teens

Ah yes, teenagers… Undoubtedly some of the quirkiest and most out-of-the-box thinking players out there! Boy Waving hand with Open Mouth What makes a great escape room for teenagers? Here’s a clue: It’s an escape room that allows them to play alongside their family while at the same time providing them with opportunities to challenge themselves and showcase their smarts. Most escape adventures do not involve phones or outside interference; players are asked to lock away their phones for the duration of the game. For teens in particular, this helps everyone to be present and engaged with the room and the entire family. When first entering the room, give your teens and tweens the time and space to discover the room and its puzzles. Most escape rooms have hidden puzzle elements that are fun and exciting to find, so have them try some puzzles on their own. Doing this encourages them to use their imagination and creativity to find their own solutions, which will help them have the best experience possible.

Parenting in an Escape Rooms

To make your experience truly enjoyable, it’s important to think about what you want to get out of this room. When booking your next family escape room experience, think whether you’re picking the right theme for your child… Things to consider include:

Are they jittery or easily distracted?
Are they scared of the dark?
Are they able to read and write yet?

Also check if there are any age restrictions for the room you’re looking to book. Why? Because the fact is that not all rooms are designed to be played by everyone. Generally, there are tough puzzles, horror/scary elements, and adult themes that may not be advertised for younger players. If you’re unsure, call the escape facility ahead of time and double check with them. It’s fun to choose a room together, so try to get the whole family’s input when picking a theme and difficulty level. You can also think about asking to make the room private or just buying out the room. We often recommend this because, when it comes to playing with families, it can be difficult for strangers to have the same level of enjoyment when tackling a puzzle room with a family that’s also playing it at the same time. By booking a private room, you can ensure your family will be playing in a more controlled environment where you don’t need to worry about frustrated strangers.

Some Final Notes on Escaping the Room as a Family

The family that plays together stays together! This is especially true with escape rooms because communication is key. Remember to talk through the room, work together to stay organized, and switch up puzzles if you’re stuck… Speaking of stuck, if your group is having trouble getting through a puzzle or two then most escape rooms are happy to provide hints and direction to help you get back on track. Girl Looking at the Images Escape rooms are meant to be immersive and entertaining. The most important thing to remember is to enjoy the experience and not take it too seriously. At the end of the day, the memories and time you spent together are incredibly valuable – so make the most out of your escape!

We Want You & Your Family to Have Fun

Here at Arcadia Adventures Escape Room, we want your family to have the best possible experience. Remember to listen to guidelines and instructions to ensure a safe and fun time. When in the room, it’s best to keep an eye on your kids and be respectful. Believe us when we say that it’s easy to be distracted once inside, so make sure your kids know to not play too rough or damage any props or items. While small accidents will inevitably happen, keep in mind there are cameras and if the gamemaster sees disrespectful or destructive behavior you may be asked to leave. Playing with your family – especially when there are younger family members playing – means you may not be as fast and efficient as you would like. Keep in mind this is a bonding experience for everyone, try and stay calm and guide them through the room. Another great thing about playing an escape room with family is that it’s an excellent time to teach your kids good, analytical problem solving skills. Escape rooms are a great way to teach new skills and ways of thinking, so take this time to impart your wisdom!

Ready to jump into your next escape room adventure? Then contact us or just go ahead and book one of our awesome escape rooms online!

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 one of our Calgary escape rooms by contacting us on 587-356-0440.

If you’ve ever participated in an escape room adventure, you probably have an idea of the attention to detail and planning that goes into designing a quality locked room experience!

Creating a (good) escape room puzzle is an art and a science. And while no two escape rooms will be the exact same, there is a unique formula that goes into crafting an immersive escape puzzle.

In this post, we’re exploring a few different types of puzzles that can add some spicy variety to a puzzle room’s play-through.

Some Spice to Make an Escape Room Nice…

We’ll share an industry secret with you: When designing an escape room, the key to crafting a great escape experience is in entertaining your players while getting them to flex their puzzle solving muscles.

While the examples we’re using below are generic, a great escape room will feature all these types of escape puzzles while matching the theme and atmosphere of the room itself.

The Tactile Puzzle:

AAny tactile element of an escape room puzzle involves physically manipulating pieces or placing objects in the correct place.

Tip: Tactile puzzles really should be the bread and butter of your escape room.

This is largely because the greatest draw of a real life escape room (compared to an online escape game, for example) is the ability to explore and interact with the physical space.

Players want to pick up items, use tools, move around and interact with the room. As such, tactile puzzles should be front-and-center. (Bonus points if your puzzle requires the use of two or more players to solve!)

A standard example of a traditional tactile puzzle would be a jigsaw puzzle.

The Logic Puzzle:

Given a set of defined rules, players are asked to solve a sequence or put items in the correct order.

Logic puzzles are great for “meta puzzles” (ie. puzzles that require solutions from multiple other puzzles to solve). These puzzles are fun, but must be thoroughly tested to ensure the logic holds up and shortcuts cannot be taken with just a few answers!

A classic example would be Einstein’s Five Houses Riddle.

The Math Puzzle:

Can be as simple as counting and adding the correct number of items in a room to solving for x in an equation.

Mathematical puzzles are the easiest puzzles to design and the hardest to make enjoyable.

While solving 3 + x = 6 is indeed a puzzle, it is too reminiscent of after school exercises and classes.

Our experience has taught us that the best way to incorporate a math puzzle is to combine it with another type. Requiring players to solve [# of Statues] + [# of Lamps] = Lock Combination forces players to explore the room and interact in a tactile way.

While the final puzzle is mathematical in nature, the players enjoy the experience much more!

The Dexterity Puzzle:

This type of puzzle challenges players by putting items out of reach, which requires patience or physical skill.

An example of this would be placing a key out of reach that must be grabbed by a long pole or balancing objects through a maze.

A dexterity puzzle is an off-shoot of tactile puzzles in that players are not only interacting with an object, but must show skill with said object to succeed.

In the example given, reaching a key with a pole is not actually a “puzzle”. However, finding pieces of a pole and then realizing one needs to assemble it to reach the key is.

You’ll want to be careful with dexterity puzzles – you don’t want to allow too much chance of failure on the part of the player! Nothing stops the flow of an escape room more than having the host resetting the puzzle because a key accidentally dropped out of reach!

The Cryptic/Translation Puzzle:

With a cryptic/translation puzzle, players are given an indecipherable set of symbols with no instructions on how to translate them.

As a result, it is up to the player to find clues and patterns in the symbols to translate or make sense of the puzzle.

Tip: This type of puzzle is good if you want to incorporate backtracking in your rooms.

Having a strange set of symbols at the start and then providing a codex later on allows a designer to extend the “playspace” of their rooms. Cryptic/Translation puzzles are great, but care must be taken to ensure the puzzles are not so cryptic that players do not solve them.

A common type of cryptic puzzle would be a rebus puzzle.

Riddles:

Can be a question or statement with a hidden meaning, often with a nice rhythmic prose.

For example, “A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.” Answer: An Egg.

Riddles are amazing puzzles, but you should take care to ensure they are not so difficult that players do not solve them. But with any good escape room, no outside information should be required; the answer to your riddle should be located somewhere in the room to that players can stumble upon it and put two and two together.

This may seem like giving away the answer, but not if the answer is cleverly disguised as part of the decor/theme!

For example, in the above riddle, placing an egg in the middle of a zombie-themed escape room would obviously stand out. Placing an egg on the plate of a restaurant themed escape room is another story.

And that’s that! However, we’ll end with one final tip: Remember that puzzles should not be arbitrarily stuck onto a room like a weird appendage. The best rooms have puzzles that are developed from the theme outward, not forced in because “we need a math puzzle to balance things out.”

Now it’s a matter of finding the best balance that works for you… So good luck and happy designing!

Ready to jump into your next escape room adventure? Then contact us or just go ahead and book one of our awesome escape rooms online!

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 one of our Calgary escape rooms by contacting us on 587-356-0440.

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In our last blog post, we offered some great tips & tricks to help new escape room adventurers (and those who might be a bit rusty) make their next experience a great escape.

In this post, we’re offering some helpful hints for the more “seasoned” escape room artists – those who have enjoyed solving a locked room puzzle or two, but who yearn to delve deeper into the mystery and get the most out of their puzzle room journey.

To these inquisitive and adventurous souls, it is for you that we write this post!

With great (escape room) knowledge comes great power.

In this case, the great power we’re referring to is the power to influence and responsibly guide your fellow escape adventurers on their own paths to puzzle room prowess. We like to call these locked room veterans “enlightened escapers”.

If you’re a seasoned escape room artist who is using the following tips & tricks to improve your own experience then we strongly urge you to remember that your fellow escape adventurers may not be at your level.

As such, if you don’t respect their own escape room journeys then you risk 2 terrible things:

1. Ruining it for them by being “that guy”… As in, being “that guy” who knew more about escape room puzzles than anyone else there and got impatient when it took his fellow escapists a while to figure stuff out. That guy sucks. Don’t be that guy.

2. Ruining it for yourself.

However, if you consciously make a point of using your knowledge for good – ie. to enhance your own enjoyment of the escape room experience while respectfully helping others with theirs – then we know that what follows will help you take your escape room journey to the next level!

1. Swap Puzzles

Trust us – we fully understand how frustrating getting stuck on a puzzle can be. Sometimes you just can’t seem to wrap your head around how the puzzle works. As a result, you end up being more frustrated with it than anything else.

We totally get it, but we hate to see it.

Instead of wasting precious time on a puzzle that makes no sense to you, it’s in everyone’s best interest to swap the puzzle with someone else. This way, you can get a fresh set of eyes on it.

A new perspective on a puzzle can easily bring a new approach to solving it, so let it go and leave that ego at the door! Doing so will most certainly help ensure you have a way better frame of mind and more fun time.

2. Work Together

Teamwork makes the dream work, and this is a dream team game!

Work with your team to solve the puzzles. Seriously. The most counter-productive thing you can do it to take a puzzle and quietly sit in a corner trying to solve it alone – this will lead to a way less fun experience for absolutely everyone involved.

If you don’t book a private room for a group of familiar people then random players may join you. So if you happen to be playing with random players then try your very best to include them in your processes and thought strategy.

(Life Pro Tip: Almost all escape rooms allow for private bookings, but if you happen to be in an escape room with random players then just remind yourself that everyone’s there for the same reason – to have fun!)

T3. Leave Pride at the Door and Ask for Hints

Even enlightened escapers really, truly should not be worried about asking for hints! After all, nobody can expect you to be an escape room savant or psychic.

We mention this here because, in our years of experience hosting escape room games, we’ve noticed that the people who don’t like asking for hints are frequently veteran escape room players. But that’s usually just because they aim for the top of leader boards!

A good rule of thumb is that if you’re stuck on a puzzle for 10 minutes without any new ideas or theories for solving it, it’s best to just hit the hint button for help.

4. Think Outside the (Puzzle) Box

Not all puzzles are cut and dry (nor should they be!) Sometimes you will need to go outside of the puzzle’s constraints to solve it – mentally and physically.

In fact, we’ll go so far as to say that this should generally be your “go-to” way of thinking if the puzzle makes no sense on its own. If you cannot solve a puzzle with the given items in a box then it likely means that there is more to the puzzle than meets the eye.

And, like many other things in life, it can be truly difficult to remove yourself to the point of objectivity when you get too involved in a conundrum!

Escape rooms offer puzzle solvers a unique opportunity to uncover the secrets within both the room and themselves (deep, we know – but also true). So just remember: A good escape room holds everything you need to solve the puzzle, so be sure to think outside the box while keeping it inside the room.

Ready to jump into your next escape room adventure? Then contact us or just go ahead and book one of our awesome escape rooms online!

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 one of our Calgary escape rooms by contacting us on 587-356-0440.

Monday	Closed
Tuesday	Closed
Wednesday	2:00PM to 7:00PM
Thursday	2:00PM to 7:00PM
Friday	3:00PM to 9:00PM
Saturday	12:00PM to 9:00PM
Sunday	12:00PM to 6:00PM