Fun and critical thinking are not mutually exclusive in trendy escape rooms
Ashley Martin, Regina Leader-Post
Dale D'Silva at his business Escape Club.	Michael Bell / Regina Leader-Post
Dale D'Silva had no idea what he was getting into when he signed up for his first escape room adventure on a visit to Calgary in July.
He was locked inside a theme room — a simulated pirate ship — with seven strangers for an hour. They deciphered clues and located a treasure map in the goal of finding the key to get out of the room.
Like a strategic board game or computer game brought to life, the escape room was "amazing amounts of fun," said D'Silva.
At the end of their experience, "everybody wanted to do another room."
And D'Silva thought right away about how well this would go over in Regina. He opened his Escape Club last week in the Warehouse District.
"It's challenging. It's really good," said Aaron Kaye, who was part of a group that did the escape room on Saturday.
"You look around the room for different clues … puzzles you have to put together, combinations for locks and stuff like that," Kaye added. "I'm definitely going to come back."
D'Silva's first escape room — his second is in the works — is themed "the curse of the evil genie." Without giving away spoilers for future escapees, the gist is: Trapped inside a magic lamp, you have to identify the genie's 10 favourite "Tales of the 1,001 Nights" through teamwork and problem-solving.
(For the record, you're not actually trapped inside the room, said D'Silva. He decided locking the door would be detrimental in cases of anxiety, claustrophobia and fire.)
An escape room is not just for game lovers — it's an outside-of-the-box team-building exercise because "you really have to cooperate and communicate in order to finish a room," said D'Silva.
Escape Club is the second such business in Regina. The first opened in June; Key Quest is located inside of Laser Quest and has had a "tremendous response," said Joe Wedge of Laser Quest Regina.
Escape rooms are a "huge fad everywhere else in the world," said D'Silva.
Toronto has 50 companies, up from last year's 20, D'Silva said. Calgary has opened seven since the summer. There are three in Saskatoon, and two more in the works in Regina, he added.
But D'Silva doesn't view other companies as competition.
"An escape room is more like a movie in that once you do one escape room, you want to just go do another one usually right after."
He'll generate a buzz for other companies, and vice versa.
D'Silva says novelty is part of the appeal, but it's more than that.
"It's interactive; it's hands on; you're actually physically playing with stuff; you're physically searching for stuff. It's just tweaked towards what humans are designed to be. We're not designed to sit in front of a TV screen," said D'Silva.
"It's a game, it's fun, it's an outing, but you have to actually be using your brain, working with your hands and mind and combining everything into one."
Click for more information about Escape Club and Key Quest.
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