Anna

Just getting your first glimpse into the room you can tell what you wanted to be around or not with expectations of spookums. When I did it with another group of people we were combined with a couple randos. A multiple room environment there’s a lot of well made scares and uses of tech to emulate the supernatural. Something about dolls just makes the experience already creepy. Over the course of room you find clues on USB sticks which play audio or video files on a laptop supplied. We had an issue with one and just had to move it to another port and it worked. You could tell the work put into it as the videos depict the room itself and the audio voices are the same as those in the video. Some of the clues and items you find are progressive, and you don’t require right away but all add up to something later. The objective to the room is to find out answers to certain plot points, thus is a very heavily story driven room as opposed to just a theme. Definitely a recommended room for people who enjoy an extra little scare in their rooms (I let out a sneeze part way through and scared over half the room if that’s any indication).

The first stop on the August Edmonton Escape Room Tour is Anna at Breakout East! I love horror and mystery themed rooms so I was immediately drawn to this room with Breakout advertising this room as a highly immersive room and that it would be more suitable for ages of 16 & over. Does it live up to the advertised precautionary? Absolutely. This is easily one of my favorite rooms I have completed in a while. The room itself is highly immersive- from the décor, to the music, to the lighting, to the clues that you unravel; the immersion is easily the best part about this room. Without giving too much away, the clues you unravel are either a short video or a short audio clip that provides story and hints to solve puzzles. It could be considered a time waster, especially given that you only have 45 mins and if you don’t catch the hint right away, you’ll be replaying the clues, but it worked really well. The story and objective(s) were clear and the puzzles were challenging, yet fun. Essentially, this room is one big investigation. This room also incorporated a good amount of technology and some jump scares, so be prepared. I’d recommend this room to more advanced groups but if you’re looking for good fun and scare, this room is for you too.

Disclaimer: if you cannot handle jump scares this room is not for you. With that being said, I LOVE them and well done horror themed rooms are always my favourite. This one is no exception. This room is loosely based off of the movie “Annabelle” so creepy kids and dolls are a thing in this room. There are many very cool uses of technology in this room and further enhance the scare factor. The puzzles flowed relatively well, with only one mishap that lost us a lot of time due to a part dropping into a dark corner and us not realizing it and having to use a hint. The other unique part to this room is that you not only have to escape, but you also must solve the mystery of what happened to the family, adding another layer of difficulty as well as immersion as you really had to remember what you were reading and hearing about throughout your time in the room. I would definitely recommend this room to anyone who enjoys a little scare, as this is one of two of my top horror themed rooms in Edmonton.