Disclaimer: We did this room in Saskatoon. We’ve been told by the manager in Saskatoon and the manager in Edmonton that their rooms are identical, save for a couple of puzzles.

One of the puzzles was wonky in its execution. Our gamemaster was happy enough to call the manager and have her explain the solution. She also provided some behind-the-scene tidbits about how the theme of the room came to be.

BEN

The Saskatoon location’s lobby looks pretty similar to the one in Edmonton! We got the same great in service in Saskatoon as we did in Edmonton. At the end, the manager came to walk us through one puzzle that we couldn’t quite get, which was great!

Consistent with other Escape City rooms, the puzzles were top-notch. They toe the line between difficult and too difficult. They always push your mental limits but not so much that the solution becomes impossible. There are a lot of creative surprises here.

This room, especially, will test not only your wits but your teamwork. The highlight was a puzzle involving crates that will make you hustle like never before. It was physically demanding, mentally taxing, and will test how much you can stand your teammates. I loved every second of it.

The puzzles in this room were non-linear, which was nice to see because we don’t do a lot of non-linear rooms. For the most part, I liked the difficulty level of the puzzles – there were some thinky ones and some others that required a bit more physical interaction. One qualm I had was that we got stuck on a puzzle that needed some background knowledge – unfortunately, my group was not very familiar with football.

The first part of the room was packed to the brim with details. The second part was appropriate but a bit lacking.

As is usual with Escape City rooms, Quarterback Sneak looked amazing! I definitely got a gang hideout vibe here – the decor was tasteful and appropriate, and it also advertised some of my favourite places to go in Edmonton (seriously, visit Duchess Bakery if you can). It was a smaller space, but they managed to fit everything in without it feeling cramped.

One thing I wanted to mention in particular are the videos played on the in-room TV. They were absolutely incredible and were a testament to the high quality standards of Escape City!

True to Escape City’s form, the puzzles were the strongest anchor for immersion. You will think, work, move, talk, and (if you’re like us) play foosball the entire time.

What I love about non-linear rooms is that if you’re not making progress on the puzzle you’re working on, you can move to a different one and keep going. This way, there isn’t a lot of standing around and waiting, which was great!

Seamlessly integrating Edmonton’s finest spots, the theme was one-of-a-kind. You’ll watch with mouths agape admiring Escape City’s beautiful production. There will be a lot of “Oh! I know where that is!”

This was an incredibly unique theme, and such a fantastic way to promote some local Edmonton businesses. I really don’t want to say much more, because I feel like you just need to get in there and do this room.

This room gets a #diamond for being a solid addition to Escape City’s consistently fun and challenging rooms. The theme hit close to home and featured Edmonton’s finest.

Definitely a #diamond. Bring anyone and everyone (just not too many people because it might get a bit cramped).

The people at GTFO strike the perfect balance between professional and friendly.

Cookies, water, and friendly and efficient staff. What else is there to ask for? Since there was no one booked after us, they also gave us an extra 10 minutes to finish the room when we didn’t get out, so that was very nice!

The puzzling in The Directive showcased some of the most advanced technology we’ve encountered in an escape room. It was intimidating to walk into a bare room with nothing but a massive control board with foreign-looking buttons and symbols.

The puzzles were elegant in concept and presentation. Because there were no mechanical locks, the puzzles were unlike any other. The unabashed use of technology allowed for less logic thinking and more “How do I tinker with this apparatus?”

The puzzles in this room aren’t the usual logic puzzles that have come to be an escape room staple. All of the puzzles in this room require some sort of communication between team members – so when your gamemaster tells you that you need to communicate in this room, make sure to listen to them!

There were no locks in this room which always seems to throw us off at the start, but I thought that it really worked in the grand scheme of the room. We got fun, creative puzzles that were deceptively simple and didn’t over-rely on number combinations.

The intriguing bareness of the room paired well with the elegance of the puzzles. The machinery in each room served as the centrepiece. The intentional lack of decoration allowed players to focus on how to solve each puzzle instead of trying to tease out red herring from relevance.

There’s not a lot in this room, but I thought it was appropriate given the theme. It also wasn’t conspicuously empty – it did feel right!

This room pushes not only your mental limits but also your patience. There was a lot of shouting from our group and, conversely, listening to each other. You have to be able to be expressive but also be receptive to information.

I thought that this room was great at building momentum – it almost always felt like we were moving forward instead of being stuck. Unfortunately, since we came with a smaller group, there were times when I had to wait on the rest of my group members to do something before I could jump in.

PAULIE

This was one area that The Directive relegated to the sideline, and, understandably so. The puzzles speak for themselves–complete them and get out.

It was a standard theme as far as escape rooms go, but it was executed very well. I enjoyed the twist that happened midway through!

This room was a stellar accomplishment from GTFO and deserves a #diamond. It reinforces them as a premiere escape room company within the Edmonton scene. Be warned: This room isn’t for small groups or rookies. If this were a videogame, The Directive is final-bad-guy level.

I would give this room a #diamond. I think to really get the most from this room, you need to go with 5 or 6 people (which we unfortunately didn’t). This room is absolutely perfect if you’re doing a team-building activity of some sort!

We did this room on GTFO’s re-opening weekend. If they had cookies and water for free consumption before, they had pizza, cake, and soda this time around. They clearly know the surest way to an escape room player’s heart.

Service at GTFO has always been amazing, but they really brought it for their reopening.

The puzzles were serving escape-room-circa-early-2010s realness: You had laminated sheets cut into little pieces for a makeshift jigsaw, classic lock-and-key-operated boxes, and others that were very straightforward.

I could see how the puzzles here could be fun to solve in the early days of Edmonton’s escape room scene. In the context of 2017, however, the low-techness and simplicity of it all came across as dated.

There are a good variety of solid puzzles here – some wordy, some numbery, some findy. There should be something for everyone! The puzzles mostly follow a linear progression and are the traditional combo-and-lock format. I personally found them a bit too straightforward, but that may be because I’ve done too many rooms!

There was a clear and purposeful progression to the look of this room. What started out as an innocent-looking office space progressed into a full-blown internal bank vault.

At times bare, and at times decorated with glitzy props, the look was tastefully designed.

I didn’t find anything particularly compelling about the room’s look, but it also wasn’t bad. One thing in particular that I did like was the room’s use of physical space. There was always enough wiggle room for our group of 4 to do our thing.

There was a lot of screaming on our end every time we solved a puzzle. This was partly due to our own craziness, partly due to the sugar content of the free cake, and particularly because the excitement slowly but surely built up.

We finished in a very short time though (a testament to how easy and simple the puzzles were), which made us go, “That’s it?”

In this room, we had asked the GTFO staff to hide some birthday gifts in one of the last puzzles for our friends to find. This was definitely a motivating factor for us to go quick and break out (or at least find the gifts). When our friends found the gifts, they exclaimed, “Wow they hide prizes in here? How did they know I wanted this?!” And they were serious. Thanks for hiding the gifts for us GTFO!

At the time of writing, there are three heist-themed rooms in Edmonton (and more in Calgary–and innumerably more across the globe). This was Edmonton’s first.

For a theme as common as this, there wasn’t much to the story as the tasks were already pretty straightforward.

This was a straightforward heist theme. While this might have been more exciting for someone doing their first room, the theme was pretty much negligible. That said, the puzzles and decor were still thematically appropriate!

This room gets a #gold. We are aware that this is one of Edmonton’s most-beloved rooms, as per different escape room blog posts. While it was still a great room, some of its components have been left behind by time.

I would give this room a #gold! This room is fantastic for people who are just starting with escape rooms. Bring a smaller group so everyone can contribute!

Logic Lock always makes you feel warm and fuzzy when you visit. We’ve gotten to know the staff and owners there really well over the past year. They always strive to uphold excellence in their customer service.

The Gallery leaned heavily on technology to anchor the puzzles. They were sometimes covert, requiring acute perception to discern the tiniest detail in your surroundings. They were sometimes obvious, with certain gizmos in the room displaying puzzles that were begging to be solved.

The puzzles had a mix of difficulty, depending on which type caters to how your brain functions. It would have been cool to have the paintings themselves be manipulable, instead of just being passive sources of clues in the room.

This room was clinically clean, as what you would expect from an actual art gallery. The props were impeccable replicas of European art history’s greatest hits. The blueprint was strategic, allowing players to feel like they’re staging an authentic break-in.

This room would benefit from minor furniture tweaking though, as some of the shelves make it look like a mansion than a museum.

Pioneered by Logic Lock, the clue system paves the way for a complete immersive experience, with no one in a uniform coming in to give you a clue and reminding you that you are merely playing a game.

What sets this apart from other other Logic Lock rooms though is how they constantly reinforce the notion that you are in the middle of a break-in vulnerable to being caught at any moment. They do something cool and different to up the notch of immersion.

One of the hallmarks of this room is the story being a continuation of The Warehouse’s. While cute, I’m not entirely sure if it really mattered in the room.

This room gets a #platinum for being a worthy addition to Logic Lock’s ever-growing collection of great rooms.

The folks here got us in and out quickly. I especially appreciate their flashing flip-dot clip-on sign to indicate employee name. It was a nice personal touch.

I continue to be a non-fan of their “If you don’t finish a room, we won’t show the rest of it to you” policy.

I’ve done a couple of Exit Edmonton’s rooms and find that the staff is always welcoming and friendly. I also like that the gamemaster sticks around after they’ve given you a hint to make sure you use it properly. I agree with Paulie regarding Exit’s policy of not walking you through the completion of the room. Sure, it could be a way to motivate people to return and re-attempt the room… but what’s the point knowing that if you fail again you still can’t see the full room.

The puzzles ranged from ambiguous to obvious.

They were baked into the environment so you have to discern which ones were puzzles and which ones were merely props. The room would benefit from having tighter connections between clues and puzzles to avoid confusion.

With some escape rooms you walk in and can immediately see exactly what puzzles you’ll be working with. Not the case with Catacombs. You definitely need to work to uncover what you can use to further your progress in each part of the room. I think there was a nice mix of puzzle types, some standard locks and some cryptic puzzles which required a fair amount of manipulation/decoding.

This room was tiny but made clever use of the space. What it lacked in wiggle room it more than made up for in atmosphere with the strategic placements of decor and apparatus.

Paulie said it perfectly. Yes, the rooms were much smaller than what I’ve become used to, but Exit used that to their advantage to make players really feel like they’ve broken in a cult’s secret lair. The décor became more ominous as you made your way through the rooms as well, definitely a nice way to build up player suspense.

Appropriately dark with just the right amount of spook and surprises, the room expertly used candles, skulls, bones, dusty books, along with a mishmash of cult-ish symbols.

What? You mean I wasn’t breaking into a secret cult’s lair? The creepy maze of connecting rooms was all fake? Had me fooled.

Advertised as an initiation, the room takes advantage of the theme and makes you feel like a cult inductee. I half-expected a human sacrifice at the end of our journey.

ISABEL

I totally dug the whole cult theme. I’ve done other rooms where the plot involves a break in, gaining information, getting out before you’re caught etc, but the whole cult theme adds a nice touch of suspense. Décor, lighting, and storyline complemented the theme nicely as well, which further added to how enjoyable the room was.

This room gets a #gold for being one of EXIT Edmonton’s better rooms. With a rare theme and expert use of small space, Catacombs introduces a spooky atmosphere that remains constant until the end.

I give this room a #platinum. Catacombs does a great job of making you feel like you’ve infiltrated an area that was not meant for the general public. The sense of urgency to get what you need and GTFO before you’re caught constantly looms over you. I still look over my shoulder to this day..

We were late by a considerable amount of time and they were forgiving enough and still let us play.

Like Paulie said, we arrived way past our start time, but they still let us in, which was great!

The puzzles were heavily marred by the failed use of technology. This is one of those few rooms that focuses on technology anchoring the puzzles, instead of the other way around. The setup was a bit too ambitious leading to a string of “Oh, did we not do it right? How come nothing is happening?” moments. I appreciate the attempt at creativity and being out-of-the-box, but the effectiveness of the puzzles was compromised.

I actually liked some of the puzzles here, but the tech that was involved in each of the puzzles made for a frustrating experience. We would be doing a puzzle correctly, but the tech was unresponsive. We ended up spending quite a bit of time on some puzzles that we were already doing correctly.

Again, technology was in the foreground here. There were exposed wires, buttons, and dials all around the room to make for a very unpolished finish.

This room was a little bare. There wasn’t too much going on, and what little there was, I did not find very impressive.

We spent more time figuring out why the tech was not working (and watching the staff members come in and out of the room figuring out why the tech was not working) than actually playing the room.

Overall, I found myself frustrated with this room because of the faulty tech and the weak connections between puzzles.

Another heist-themed room – hooray! The only difference is, there was no sense of urgency at all in this room. It was like rallying your troops to attempt an adrenaline-pumping heist, only to feel a sense of surrender midway through the experience.

Conceptually, the puzzles made a little bit of sense given the theme of a diamond heist, but there wasn’t anything special about the room in terms of looks or puzzles that really made this seem like a diamond heist.

This room gets a #coal. Breakout East is usually consistent with the quality of their rooms. This one sticks out like a sore and faulty thumb.

Unfortunately, this room gets a #coal. I would hope that the tech issues are resolved before other people try this room.

It always seems like the folks at Clinic are on auto-pilot. Despite asking how many rooms you’ve done, they still go through the same spiel of explaining how locks work.

The staff was friendly and got us in and out quickly.

EXIT is always reliable with delivering standard puzzles. Nothing new, nothing special, nothing extraordinary. The puzzles here were no different. There were just too many that involved reading and discerning tiny little details from a stack of patient files which felt lazy and made for a very tedious experience.

What I’ve found from EXIT is that the puzzles require you to pick out very small details from the room, and Clinic was no exception. I’m actually kind of surprised we made it out! There were a few puzzles where the answer could be a bunch of things, and it was then up to you to trial them all on the lock you were trying to open – this kind of puzzle design is a bit clunky.

The room starts off in the waiting room and ends in a morgue. It looked appropriately like a clinic but with an inexplicable eerie feeling in the overall look.

It did look like a clinic. I thought this room was nice in that it didn’t go too overboard with decor, but it also wasn’t too empty.

Having the cadaver exposed the entire time was a very clever way to build up suspense throughout the entire experience. There was just too much bottlenecking here resulting from the puzzle design that made for a disengaged game.

Part of the immersiveness was from our group members being too scared to progress in the room. Otherwise, there wasn’t anything special that made the room particularly immersive.

There’s always that feeling of they could have done more to maximize the theme. Again, there was nothing special here.

Hospital themes are abundant, and I didn’t find that Clinic did anything to separate itself from the crowd. The puzzles were thematically appropriate and so was the look.

The room was like hospital food–nothing special, satiates you in the moment, but leaves you wanting more. It gets a #silver. This room would benefit from extra resuscitation.

I would give this room a #silver. It’s not a must-do, but it’s also not a terrible experience.

One of our recently addicted-to-escape-rooms friends Isabel decided she wanted to review the room as well!

We brought a big group with us to satisfy the minimum number of players needed for Dream’scape. Their lobby comfortably held all 9 of us.

Our actress-hostess stuck faithfully to her role and never missed a beat.

Our gamemaster was a mad scientist, but she was mad in the most endearing way possible. Like a really disorganized professor but a lovely person. She definitely nailed her character!

This was my first time at Smarty Pantz… and guess what? They have board games! In a very large waiting area! So much room for activities! Our gamemaster stayed in character as she introduced the room and did a great job of playing the role. However, I felt that the intro lasted a bit too long once we actually entered the room. After we escaped we were given an overview of each puzzle, which I liked because I didn’t get a chance to check everything out while we were trying to escape.

There were exactly 6 puzzles here. While that may not sound like a lot, every single one was multi-layered and required many hands and manipulations. There were different stations distributed around the room and it was up to you and your group to divvy up the work.

The mechanics were familiar but the presentation was sublime. You will encounter technology that is very unique to this room.

Unlike Spies and Lies and Thirst for Murder which had no puzzles and ok puzzles respectively, the puzzles were the focus of Dream’scape. There was a good mix of physical puzzles and mental puzzles, and a good chunk of them did require some sort of teamwork! The room is also completely nonlinear, so you and your team can attack it in any order you want! I would definitely say though that there is not enough to do for 16 people (the max for this room). We did it with 9 but I felt that we could have gone in with less and still have escaped.

The puzzles in this room are pretty creative, quite diverse as well. Some classic riddles, physical manipulation, stone cold logic, definitely something for everyone. I found that the puzzles didn’t really build on each other like I’ve experienced with other rooms, which I suppose is fitting, especially considering the fact that you’re in a trippy dream world and all.

This room housed a myriad of props and decorations that did not go together, like thoughts and sequences stitched together in a dream. Usually there is a centerpiece prop that anchors the entire room’s look.

In Dream’scape’s case, there were multiple larger-than-life apparatuses, each one proudly standing tall and screaming “Come. Solve me.” The cool thing about these was that they were both beautiful and manipulable, contributing to the overall allure of the environment while also providing the solution to the puzzles.

It was a pretty room! It fit all 9 of us very comfortably. Being dream-based gave them a lot of creative liberty, which I think they did take. For a space that is essentially unlimited in its possibilities, I thought that a couple more risks taken would have sent this score to a 10.

I definitely felt like I jumped through the rabbit hole upon entering this room, it has a real “Wonderland” feel to it. There’s a lot going on and none of the décor is tied to a single theme, which, again, is actually a pretty accurate representation of a wacked out dream.

When our gamemaster gave us the greenlight, all 9 of us ran and scattered immediately around the room like hounds released in the wild. Everyone was yelling over each other. The energy was electric. That level of excitement dissipated as everyone found a station that appealed to their strength but the level of focus remained constant.

We would have liked the lights to be dimmer or the music to be louder to remind us that we were in a dream. At times it did feel more like a room with a series of tasks that needed completing.

IT WAS HOT. That was the main thing that broke immersion for me. I had to pause to fan myself a couple times. The heat did make for good motivation to get out as fast as we could though.

Another thing that broke immersion for me was the walkie-talkie hint system. I have terrible speech discrimination, so I find it pretty hard to understand what comes out of the walkie-talkie.

You need a minimum of 8 people if you want to sign up for Dream’scape (the max is 16). When I heard this I thought that we’d have a lot of material to sift through, puzzles to solve, etc. I didn’t feel like this expectation was met while completing this room. Instead, I found that there were times when I was just standing around because each puzzle had 2-3 people working through it.

The room yaddi-yaddas through the story. It was very mission-centric: We were in a dream and we needed to wake up. Like the decor, the puzzles had no cohesive structure. Because dreams are a mishmash of anything and everything random, I suppose they could get away with it.

The story is just as you would expect a dream to be – it seems like it makes sense in the moment, but it actually doesn’t. The puzzles in this room really didn’t have anything to do with the theme (for the most part). And strangely enough, I was ok with it. The backstory and our gamemaster set us up for something that was going to be nonsensical, so I actually found the room cohesive in its chaos.

I feel kind of “meh” about this theme. I understand that dreams tend to be chaotic with no real structure, but what I look for in an escape room is general cohesion, the buildup with each puzzle, and carryover from task to task. The whole isolated units thing didn’t really do it for me.

This room gets a #platinum for being one of the few rooms that makes teamwork mandatory. It also features never-before-seen puzzles and a tastefully whimsical decor. Try this room if you’re ready for a challenge.

I would give this room a #platinum. Edmonton doesn’t have very many rooms that can accommodate big groups in terms of their physical and puzzle spaces, so I’m glad that Smarty Pantz has given us Dream’scape to fill this gap. I would definitely not recommend hitting the cap of 16 people though – bring between 8-10 so that everyone still has something to do!

I give this room a #gold. The puzzles are quite unique and Smarty Pantz definitely put time into decorating and designing the room, but I felt kind of bummed that there were multiple points throughout the escape where I had nothing to do.