This room replaces the previous “Torture Chamber” at Breakout Calgary. So, we waited some time after open and such to make sure all of the kinks were worked out before going to try it. Looking at the name, and the fact they were giving away Annabelle tickets in relation with opening the room, we thought it was going to be a scary, spooky sort of room. After reading the story and getting our preamble, it was suppose to be a heist theme. And when playing the room, we had more of a detective/murder mystery kind of feel to it. The rooms is neat with an interesting layout and different types of puzzles. To make note: there was a mechanical error made/had by the room previous to us that left one puzzle kinda exposed along with its surprise element. We were informed of this beforehand and asked if we had wanted to continue to do the room or not. We, evidently, did decide to do it. The room was described as linear, and boy, that wasn’t a lie. It’s Super Linear! Literally one puzzle led to another, which led to another, etc. There wasn’t really a point to split off and work on different elements at all. The puzzles were… interesting puzzles, but didn’t fit theme wise, or were just not practical in any sense to why anyone would have this in their home. There’s a couple areas for spook, and one really tense little dark space, but overall didn’t give us a “Annabelle” genre related feel.
After finishing off Breakouts first three rooms, I think I can say for our entire group. We were excited to see them release a new room! When we arrived we were told the room had a piece broken and it would affect our game or we could come back and try it when they fix it. After a bit of deliberating we decided to give the room a go so I feel like this review should have an asterisk next to it. The puzzles were all really straightforward and a bit too simple in my opinion. Nothing really stood out to me as innovative tech or the use of tech to make the puzzles a bit more challenging. The item that was broken would have supplied us with a jump scare but outside of that it was a super tame room. Breakout placed a neat reference to Stranger Things in here, which was my highlight of the room. I was really confused with the plot of the room. It was a bit muddled though as you’re supposed to be breaking into a mansion but later on in the road it seems like they went down a different direction. For a breakout room it kind of ended with a whimper and left you wanting more from it.
This is the newest room at Breakout Calgary, replacing the torture chamber room. It is advertised/themed as a heist room, but without any real explanation is also ‘spooky’. Before we started we were told one of the puzzles had just broken, but we decided to do it anyways. There was a puzzle that once we figured out the correct placement it was supposed to trigger a lock. When we were at that puzzle we ended up using a hint to see if we had it correct before we moved onto the next (‘now revealed’) item. Overall it was enjoyable, but there was nothing that really stood out and the theming felt a little disjointed.
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