Escape2gether is tucked in a small corner, southeast of the city. We didn’t get the warmest reception when we came. Our game master was curt with giving clues. I’m a firm believer that escape rooms are an experience that begins with check-in. This cold and detached initial interaction paved the way for the rest of the experience.

Service was prompt – maybe a bit too prompt. Our game master was quick and efficient, but lacked the charisma of other game masters that we’ve had in the past.

There were a lot of puzzles here. Quantity didn’t always equate to quality. There were more misses here than hits, ranging from average to downright unoriginal. The few bright spots were when the room managed to provide puzzles that were connected to the theme and did not need a leap of logic… which happened maybe once or twice.

I felt that the puzzles here were uninspired – there wasn’t a lot of depth to them, and I rarely felt accomplished finishing one. There was also no sense of cohesion or progression to the puzzles – they seemed as if they were all designed independently and plunked into some random point in the room. There were some puzzles that needed to be touched up a bit to be functional.

Secret lab meets haunted apartment. This room combines generic escape room tropes resulting in a failed attempt to look anything remotely like a hospital. It looked sloppy, and unintentionally so.

I’m not usually too harsh on the looks of rooms since I’m more of a puzzle person, but this room was quite sloppy. Like the puzzles, the decor of the room felt disconnected from each other and from the central theme. The space was also allotted a bit strangely, with small areas that could have been bigger and a big area that could have been smaller.

I could see some people being really into this room. It was like a cheesy horror movie that you sit through for the entire thing even though you already know what’s going to happen. The lights turn on after it finishes and you forget about the whole thing and go about the rest of your day. The experience was underwhelming to say the least.

I wasn’t too impressed with this room, so I wasn’t really into it. We also didn’t get music for the first part.

The story was nonexistent. You enter a psychiatric hospital and you try to escape. Why are you there? Who put you there? Why is there a computer conveniently next to the hospital bed? Why is there a globe made of foam that seems to serve no purpose? Why are you collecting salt-shakers?

So many questions no one knows the answers to. And I couldn’t care less.

Like I mentioned above, I found this room to be all over the place. The puzzles didn’t fit the theme (which was… what again?), and even some of the decor seemed confused as to why it was in the room.

This room gets a #coal  for its bumbling attempt to mash horror escape room elements, adding up to a heavy-handed and incohesive final product.

I give this room a #bronze. I can see this being enjoyable for a first-timer, but once you have a few rooms under your belt, it’s easily overshadowed by some of the other companies in Calgary.