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 about all things for Calgary escape rooms! Today we are focusing on one of the KEY components of adventure rooms. Without them, puzzles wouldn’t be the same and the experience wouldn’t be much of a challenge… An escape room just isn’t an escape room without locks! There are a few different locks that are the most prevalent in locked rooms, but not all of them are your boring everyday key locks. In this article, you’ll get to know four special types of locks and how you can unlock your full escape room potential.
Combination Locks
Combination locks might seem common enough, but they go beyond your typical locker-room dial. Combination locks always have some kind of spinning component that requires you to line up the pieces in the correct order. These locks are the most versatile, and can be customized by your escape room designers to show all sorts of symbols and messages! Numbers, letters, drawn symbols, dots – it’s all on the table for combination locks, and up to you to figure out the right combo. The biggest piece of advice for solving this sort of lock is to look for a puzzle that contains the same number of components as there are pieces on the lock. For example, if you have a 5 letter lock, scour the room for a puzzle that contains 5 riddles or 5 words. Remember to give the lock a good tug when you think you have the winning answer, and rock the rest of the trapped room!
Directional Locks
Directional locks are another common lock, guaranteed to be found in nearly every Calgary escape room. These locks often give players the most trouble, as they can be finicky at best and easily jammed at worst. These types of locks move in the four cardinal directions and can have up to a whopping 20 different moves in the final combination! The most common combination lock headscratchers are usually solved with maps, mazes, travel directions, and lines. Given how frustrating directional locks can be, it’s key to make sure your lock operator is keeping a calm and focused head (and hands) to make sure the lock is properly reset and the central button is slid all the way over each time. And – as any locked room gamerunner will tell you – remember to double click to reset!
Magnetic locks
Magnetic locks are like the cooler older brother to common key locks – all they require, like a key in the lock, is a magnet to be placed on another magnet or piece of metal. Usually it’s not just that simple though – both magnetic sides of the puzzles might be embedded into any object, furniture, or part of the wall, sometimes making these puzzles closer to scavenger hunts. Magnetic locks can’t always be instantly identified like other kinds of locks, so don’t be surprised if a puzzle asks you to touch two objects together or place something against a particular spot in the wall – that’s a hallmark of a magnet lock! These types of locks can be finicky as well, so be sure to be patient in adjusting your placement of magnetic objects to make sure things click the right way.
Punchlocks
Finally, this type of lock can be pretty rare in some Calgary escape rooms, but is a lock that can quickly become a favorite if you’re the type of person who hates having to put info into locks in a precise order. With punchlocks, pressing down the buttons in any order is fine! Punchlocks can have between 6-10 different buttons on the face of the lock, and once the correct ones are pressed down, you flip a switch on the bottom and presto! These types of locks lend themselves naturally to interesting visual and grid based puzzles, so get your creative thinking teammate on the punchlock tasks looking for a connection.
Are you a lock aficionado yet? The way you and your team tackle locks can make or break your escape room experience, as your progression of the adventure room can really depend on you cracking locks. Don’t be afraid to call for your trapped room gamemaster if you suspect a lock might be jammed – it can happen to anyone in any escape room! Now, it’s time for you to find an awesome escape room in Calgary to show off your new tips and tricks for even the trickiest and jammiest of locks. Best of luck!
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’re diving into three different types of puzzles you’ll likely encounter in escape rooms, and helpful tips on how to tackle them with style.
Logic Puzzles
Logic puzzles are all about untangling confusing clues to figure out what order the answers are supposed to be in. There’s not a lot of room for guesswork here if you want to complete your escape room quickly – logic puzzles hinge on having each component in an exact order or placement. But, these puzzles don’t have to be daunting! The key to solving a logic puzzle lies in the “keystone” clues within the set of information you are given – that is, the clues that stand alone. A classic example of a keystone in a logic puzzle may be to say that a certain object, say a flag, goes into the second position. Another clue may then say that another object goes to the right of the flag. Thanks to the keystone clue about the flag, we are now able to work from there to solve the rest! Don’t be overwhelmed by all of the information – seek out those nifty keystone clues first!
Pattern Puzzles
If logic puzzles are a bit too left-brain for your liking, you might enjoy seeking out the pattern puzzles in your adventure room! These puzzles sometimes require an open mind and keen eye to seek out potential patterns, as these puzzles can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Numbers, letters, colors, shapes, or even positions on the wall or shelves – nothing is off limits! Repetition can be a key component to figuring out pattern puzzles, as well as simply noticing the opposite – what doesn’t repeat, or what sticks out like a sore thumb in the group of clues?
Don’t just look for the patterns; understand what they’re trying to tell you. Is it a combination for a number lock or a secret sequence for a punch lock? Maybe it’s a visual guide leading you on a wild goose chase with a directional lock. Thinking spatially and pictorially can be your secret weapon against patterns in escape rooms!
Codebreaker Puzzles
Codebreaking puzzles can look like a time-sinking nightmare in an escape room. Finding a seemingly nonsensical message or series of symbols can sometimes be more daunting than inspiring. But, the first step to tackling these headscratchers is to solve a code breaking puzzle is to find the key or legend. Look for matching symbols or letters around the room, or for a grid showing correlations between two different components.
Next, figure out what you’re aiming for with your solution. Does it look like the code’s answer will provide you with a series of numbers? A word or a sentence? Is it more symbols that you will need to use elsewhere in a puzzle? Figuring out where you’re going to before you start traveling is important, and to be efficient in an escape room is no different!
Once the key has been located, figuring out the most commonly used symbols can be a strong start, especially if the codebreaking is around words. Focusing on solving letters like e, a, s, or t can speed up your escape room time. If the code breaking is around solving for numbers or symbols, tackle them in order!
Locked rooms can offer an endless array of challenging puzzles beyond these three puzzle types, and you can even apply these tips and tricks here to a lot of other puzzle types! Embrace every puzzle in an adventure room with an open mind and creative thinking. The most important thing to remember when solving an escape room, however, is making sure to communicate and work together as a team – that’s how real puzzle solving happens. The next step is to find an awesome Calgary escape room to put your new skills to the test! Happy puzzle solving!
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, let’s talk about lighting and how they impact someone playing a puzzle room!
Have you wondered why video games of today look so much better than those of the early 2000s? In fact, many games with basic modelling, textures and even animations age exceptionally well due to the effective usage of lighting.
Lighting and Game Design
In the early days of game design, lighting was flat, as if everything took place in a well lit office building. As game engines improved, alongside the hardware that ran them, so did the lighting that was available to a developer. Light was baked into scenes to add realism. Volumetric lighting allowed light to bounce of surfaces and let environments look even better. Ray tracing allowed for rays of light to be simulated individually, resulting in incredible life like scenes afforded by modern day engines such as Unreal Engine 5.
In the same manner of video games, the lighting in real life as plays a huge role in setting the mood of a location. Be it the sterile clean environment of a hospital. The cozy, warm atmosphere of a restaurant. Or the boldness of nightclub settings. The correct lighting can set the stage for an environment more-so than the design of the environment itself.
Puzzle Rooms and Lighting
All this can be be applied when it comes to the design of an escape room. While puzzle gameplay and set design is important, the correct lighting will do wonders in elevating a player’s immersion and wonderment while they are inside a locked room.
Take for example the setting of zombie research lab. Typical design will blackout the room completely; relying just on flashlights and the players imagination to set the mood. But with the addition of a few choice lighting details, immersion can be greatly increased. A locked booth with a dirty window in the corner will invoke curiosity but little else, until opening the door becomes the next objective. But if a flickering bulb is placed inside, all of a sudden the player feels anxiety, noticing it in the corner of their eye and wondering if a shadow will appear at some point. The addition of light source has aided in the thematic design and immersion of room.
Lighting the entrance to a Zombie Facility
In another example, a dungeon themed escape room can be difficult to light, especially if it is not designed to be scary. While copious amounts of candles can do the trick, having a ‘full moon’ shine through a window high up gives the room a fairy tale enchantment and puts the player at ease that this is not intended to be a ‘scary dungeon’ but a ‘magical dungeon’. It would be difficult to achieve the same thing if the room was pitch black.
Immersing Players in your Locked Room
If lighting was ignored but everything else about the design was kept the same it’s clear that we would not achieve nearly the same level of immersion. Good lighting sets the stage and implies mood. It doesn’t draw attention to itself but instead does it’s job without the player even noticing its effect. All you need to do is provide the foundation and the player’s mind will fill in the rest for you. When we design our escape room in Calgary, we incorporate a lighting pass to ensure the mood is correctly set for the player.
Puzzle rooms are a unique media format, in that one is not watching afar as in a movie, or partaking in a set sequence like a theme park ride. Instead players place themselves in the location and move though the escape room at their own pace. To achieve similar results in immersion, one must effectively use lighting to invoke the correct emotion to match the theme of the room. When designing your next adventure room, be sure to spend sometime understanding the subtleties of light and you will be surprised at how much it can elevate a room.
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.
Escape Rooms. You’ve probably heard about them through the grapevine, either from a friend or a co-worker; even TV shows like ‘The Big Bang Theory’ featured an Escape Room in one of the episodes. But what is an escape room? An escape room is a game where you and your group are locked in a themed location full of puzzles, riddles, and lots of clues and must work together before time runs out to solve everything and complete your objective!
Sounds exciting! Want to try one out but need to convince the family to come along? Well look no further. Here are some top reasons why you should check out an escape room with the family today!
Escape Rooms Are Like Board Games
Board game nights are a great family tradition; be it: Monopoly, Risk, Settlers of Catan or even Arkham Horror. However, did you know that escape rooms are very similar to real-life board games! Escape rooms are full of puzzles, riddles, stories, and so much more; however, instead of playing against your family you are working together to complete the objective. Whether that objective is escaping a fairy tale as in ‘Ye Olde Horrible Dungeon’ or stealing a priceless artifact in ‘A Golden Acquisition’, mix-up the tradition by trying an escape room on family night!
Escape Rooms Are Fun For All Ages!
Not all outings are made equal. Some people like going to the movies, others like shopping and for some a night out on the town is the highlight of the week. But after six years of business, we’ve found that families love playing escape rooms! Escape rooms have a large variety of puzzles that let everyone in the family contribute: searching for clues, solving riddles and even the odd puzzle that perplexes adults but children find straightforward. We guarantee there’s something in our escape rooms that everyone can enjoy!
Lots of Themes to Choose
Whether your family is big into zombie flicks or prefer lighthearted fantasy media, there is sure to be an escape room that tickles their fancy. Save humanity by finding a cure for the zombie plague in ‘Survival at Z-Hour’. Or escape the grasp of an evil wizard in ‘Ye Olde Horrible Dungeon’! Escape rooms are a great way to spend some time exploring another world.
Escape Rooms are Suitable for Bigger Groups
Unlike some activities which limit the number of participants, escape rooms are great for larger groups. Each room typically has an occupancy limit, around 4 to 6 players, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play if you have less or more than that. In fact, we have lots of couples and large corporate groups play in our rooms. Don’t worry too much about hitting the minimum amount of players or maxing out a room. All you need are your friends or family to have fun!
Affordable for a Night Out!
Escape Rooms in Calgary tend to range from $24.00 to $40.00, depending on the location you decide to visit. Each business will have their own prices and some charge on a sliding scale (ie: the less people you have the more expensive the cost). At Arcadia Adventures Escape Room, we have two set prices. Our Adult price is $27.95 and no matter how many players you have, the price will stay the same; perfect for a small outing or a couple going on a date night! Our child pricing is $21.95 (For 12 & under.) So if you are looking to play an escape room with the kids and you don’t want to break the bank, check us out!
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.
Escape rooms are great for team building activities, but why is that? Is it because of the creative problem-solving they require? Or perhaps, it is because they offer many concurrent challenges that require a multitude of approaches to crack? Maybe it is because they naturally bring out the leadership qualities of individuals?
Truthfully, escape rooms are great for team-building exercises for all of those reasons, and even more that haven’t been mentioned. If you are looking for a great way to build camaraderie and friendship amongst your coworkers or employees, consider the following reasons that escape rooms should be your choice.
Escape Rooms Breed Creativity
Truly, this is one of those benefits that is hard to quantify, but it is absolutely the truth. Some escape rooms have such complicated puzzle solutions that it forces people to think outside of the box, and it is there that they learn this valuable skill. That is to say, the valuable skill of creative problem-solving.
In other circumstances, escape rooms offer sheer people power, and a naturally creative person is able to harness this power to push people out of their comfort zones and expand their own leadership abilities.
Creativity is great for team-building exercises because it involves brainstorming and everyone’s opinion has equal merit.
Escape Rooms Bring People Together
Working with the same people every day does breed a sense of community, but sometimes it can just be a sense that they are working towards a common goal. Engaging them in activities that are not related to their work helps them get to know each other as individuals, not as the head of a department or the one really helpful person at the office.
Escape rooms as team building activities give people the opportunity to see how others problem solve and think. This can be invaluable as a learning opportunity for their fellow employees, and they will be closer and more comfortable around each other as a result.
In closing, creative problem solving and comfortability are both afforded when choosing an escape room for your team building activities. Bring your team together, have a good time, and try and learn something new about everyone and it will ultimately be a much more enjoyable experience for everyone involved.
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.
