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.