Early in the fall semester, my roommates and I decided to try an escape room since there are multiple ones in downtown Guelph. After looking through all the possible room options, we decided on Fantascapes’s Lamp of the Genie. For only $20 each, we were ‘locked’ inside a genie’s lamp for an hour and had to solve various puzzles to get clues on how to ‘escape’.
The room was filled with colourful drapery and gold accented furniture. There was also a screen on the wall that genies would pop-up on to give us more clues and congratulate us when we were correct. There were voice-overs, gold coins, and lots of riddles!
We spent the first 10 minutes trying to solve each puzzle together, but quickly realized that we needed to split up to cover more ground. We would announce to each other whenever we had managed to solve a puzzle so that we were all in the loop of what was going on. We also used the tactic of keeping all the clues together in the middle area so we wouldn’t get confused about what we had or hadn’t done yet. Thankfully, the person running the room gave us some hints because we did get stuck a few times.
In the last 5 minutes of the game, we started to panic and raced to finish as we were only about 60% of the way through the puzzles in the room. Within those few minutes, we somehow managed to jump to 80% finished (according to the person running the game), so we were pretty close to escaping.
Sadly, we didn’t make it out, but it was such a fun experience. Afterward, we were able to take our picture in a photo booth with costumes and funny signs for a keepsake. I would highly recommend trying this room as the host made it very immersive and worthwhile. It was a great way to start off the semester and we each learned a bit about ourselves and how we work together as a team. I hope we’ll get to do another one in the future as this was my first attempt and I thoroughly enjoyed it!