Escape City Edmonton — Attraction in Edmonton

I really want to be able to recommend Escape City. The puzzles are well designed and clever and the execution is quite unique and novel - better in both regards than the other escape rooms I’ve seen. The staff members are very helpful and friendly. I also appreciate that the staff keep tabs to make sure you’re keeping up and will give you hints even if you don’t ask for them so that you can appreciate the puzzles without getting too bottlenecked. But unfortunately, all three escape rooms I’ve done had technical issues that made it hard to enjoy them. I appreciated the ambition of the technology behind the puzzles but it didn’t feel like there was sufficient quality control and maintenance.

Mindmaster: This had only minor issues. The background music was too loud and distracting and didn’t do anything for immersion. The puzzle with 8 screens had 1 screen frozen and 1 screen had an issue where its animation where it didn’t line up with the progress bar so it looked glitched because it looped in the middle instead of at the end. But it was simple enough to use the rest of the screens to solve the puzzle through process of elimination but if it was working as intended we probably would’ve figured it out 5 minutes faster or more.

Frank’s Revenge: This had more major issues. The phone message was far too quiet and was very hard to hear and the background music was way too loud. It was hard to hear the hints coming over the speaker. The puzzle with the symbols on the metal plating had 2 issues: 1) the symbols coming from the projector didn’t activate when we solved the preceding puzzle right away and 2) the puzzle’s tech was too sensitive and we solved the puzzle by accident.

The Woodsman: This was probably the worst one. The puzzle with the gun was extremely janky. The audio cue that you shot something was desynced from the trigger pull and the light that came on indicating you shot the right target was desynced as well by minutes. The instructions said to not fire at random targets but there was no penalty for doing so and because the audio and light cues were so desynced we ended up solving the puzzle by randomly shooting targets even though we knew the order because we couldn’t tell if the cues were desynced or the targets just weren’t being detected. We also shot from far away so we were definitely doing it correctly. This puzzle really needs to be playtested properly and shooting out of order should reset the puzzle and/or there should be a reset button. This wasted so much of our time. The colour changing pieces did not work as intended especially under the poor lighting which was very frustrating. For the clock puzzle, the seconds arm was too loose so it was hard to adjust it to solve the puzzle without it slipping and overall it felt like the puzzle wasn’t sensitive enough making us think we didn’t have the right code when we did. The bugs on the wheels were faded in some places - this was minor but showed the lack of maintenance. The staff also forgot to reset the room properly: one of the combination locks wasn’t locked and one of the electronic locks wasn’t engaged. This was a minor point though and staff resolved this quickly and gave us back some time.

I really hope they resolve these issues - we won’t be returning or recommending this place until they do. It was really disappointing especially because the puzzles were so clever and cool but were ruined by technical issues. Maybe some of these were bad luck and don’t normally occur but overall there’s definitely a lack of maintenance and playtesting. Poor audio leveling and lighting seemed to be reoccurring problems and maybe this was done for immersion but not being able to hear clues and puzzles not working are far more...

It pains me to write this review because I've done all of Escape City's rooms (except one of their current rooms) and I think they're the best escape room place in the city. However, our group of six's recent experience was marred by inexcusable technical problems in Frank's Revenge. First it was a key that didn't work; three of us tried extensively and repeatedly to open this item with the key. Keys are the most basic thing in an escape room and yet this one was so finicky even when we finally called for a "hint" the staff member couldn't immediately open it. Then it was broken logic in a puzzle solution. Then we called for another hint and the staff member didn't actually know the solution (it also took a really long time for anyone to come in); we stood around for a long time as the staff member fiddled with a puzzle thinking it was just plain broken until finally someone else came in. There may have been problematic logic in this puzzle as well but I'm not as sure as I didn't have time to re-read the clues.

It's utterly unacceptable to have keys that don't work and to send in staff who don't know the puzzles to respond to hints. I expect excellence from Escape City, and this experience was a failure. Nobody even bothered to apologize for these problems, never mind offer any kind of recompense. For the sake of official hints, the staff didn't indicate if the key "hint" counted, and when a significant portion of our time was wasted through no fault of our own nobody mentioned if we'd get more time until one of us suggested it, and the response from staff to these questions was vague. We were all quite disappointed. It was a sour end...

My family and I went and completed The Cabin a few days ago, and as avid escape room goers, we were merely satisfied. We arrived about 20 minutes early, and they let us go into the room early, which was nice as the waiting room is pretty bare. The room was immersive and I thought the addition of sound effects was pretty cool. Anyways, we got going on the first three clues but eventually needed some help so we got a hint. The lady who came in to give us the hint solved 2/3 of the puzzles for us right off the bat and told us exactly what to do for the third. I felt this wasn’t really necessary since we were pretty close and that’s not really what you want out of a hint. Also, after “we” solved those three clues, we got out in probably 10 minutes, so really those three steps that were solved for us were the majority of the room. Also, I know the room is only 45 minutes total, but I expected more. I felt there was only really 5 elements to solve before you got out, and would’ve liked more small tasks to complete rather than 5 big ones. We also picked this room because it was scary, and even the 10 year old in our group was unimpressed. The only slightly scary aspect was the flickering lights and that’s pretty weak for the scare rating it is given on your website. My final issue was that the man who introduced the room told us that we would periodically get notifications on how much time we had left, and we didn’t get a single one, so we had no idea how much time we had left to get out. I’d say that this room is well suited for beginners, and this is made even more evident by the fact that the leaderboard times for this...