Escape Capers YYC

NOTICE: Escape Capers is currently temporarily closed without a permanent location until further notice and are only doing “pop-up” theatrical hosted escape games at varying locations in the city

Escape Capers is an interesting one. It was kinda out of the way being located in the industrial area in the SE, so you need to be able to drive (or get a ride) there as it’s a bit far. I have seen buses go by, but I guess if you really want to. Now, they’re touted as being Calgary’s only hosted escape room, and for what it is, they’re right. This location has a host who is an actor in the room with you as you do your thing. While interesting, it’s is a deterring factor for a few people having someone judge our stupid trains of thought, or having us restrained from saying said thoughts out loud for fear of judgement even if it may be on the right track. Each of times we’ve been here it’s been similar to a game master through a monitor who drops you hints as you go if you seem stuck rather than asking for one through a doorbell buzzer. It seems a little… forced sometimes, when the particular person at the time who is your host/actor, may or may not be able to fully project the role that they’re in.

The parking is ample and the space is plentiful inside. The waiting area is limited to a few seats, but there was a time we were moved to what seemed like a staff room/kitchen area upstairs before starting our room (that was also upstairs). The staff are nice, and one time they taught us a card game they had out to kill the time while setting up our room. It is a bit of a novelty, but I’ve had many people skip over me describing the rooms here cause they didn’t want someone in the room with them (unsure if they necessarily felt the same way being booked with strangers as well, which may have been the deciding factor). The puzzles are a low to no tech (embarrassing for us to have found out the hard way and talking about loud with said people in the room) but they still manage to make it work. All three rooms are fairly large and have a non-linear aspect to them to allow different people to work on different things, but not all the answers would necessarily be used right away. Despite all that, we’ve yet to successfully escape a room from this location.