Designed, built, and operated by two Carleton alumni and a Concordia University graduate, Room Escape Ottawa, the most recent addition to Ottawa’s growing collection of escape game facilities, will offer something new when it opens this month: multi-room challenges.
“What’s being done in most places is that you’re trapped in a single room for an hour. What we’re doing is building something that’s a lot bigger and more immersive,” said Brian Seto, Room Escape Ottawa’s chief marketing director and a Carleton business graduate.
“Our escapes are going to be four times the size of that. Rather than escaping one room, you’ll have to escape multiple rooms. That allows us to make more creative puzzles, deeper plots, and a more immersive experience. Each time you walk into a new room, it’s a new surprise,” Seto said.
Seto works alongside Qi Hu, a Carleton engineering graduate who previously worked at Nortel, and Ramsay Jackson, an award-winning carpenter and graduate of fine arts at Concordia University.
The group’s initial plan was to build multiple escape rooms throughout a large warehouse, but Seto said since it was a time-consuming project they decided to open something else immediately in the space. They launched Archery Games, an archery-tag business, in a warehouse at 1860 Bank St. in August 2015.
Room Escape will run alongside Archery Games. According to Seto, it’s taken about six months to prepare their first room for launch. He said design times will lower as they continue to create rooms and become more experienced.
Room escape facilities first emerged in Ottawa on Nov. 20, 2014, when Escape Manor opened. The positive reviews and immense waitlists for Escape Manor prompted a handful of similar enterprises to pop up across the city, but none have enjoyed quite as much success. Whether due to lesser set design, puzzle quality, or storylines, users say they don’t match the standards set by Escape Manor. Seto said he expects Room Escape Ottawa will fare better.
“The biggest challenge we face is making sure we’re ahead of the industry, as opposed to following it,” Seto said. “We tested room escape games all over Ontario before designing our own. One common flaw we’ve seen in rooms is poor set design. We’ve put in a ton of effort and used all Ramsay’s skills to make our rooms look perfect. Our first escape room has an old-school military theme, and every piece there fits. As for puzzles, we’ve partnered with Toronto-based video game and mobile app developer Game Hive. Their expertise has given us an edge when designing the challenges in our rooms.”
Although every room escape simulation facility to open in Ottawa is bound to receive comparisons to the others, Seto said there is very little tension between the businesses.
“It is a competitive industry, but it doesn’t really feel that way. If someone really likes escape rooms, they won’t stop at one—they’ll try as many as they can. In that sense, having more quality room escape games in Ottawa is great for all of us. Obviously, we strive to be the best in the market, but we don’t see the others as enemies. As long as we all provide a quality product, there’s more benefit than harm,” Seto said.
Room Escape Ottawa will open to the public on Oct. 2, with one room operational. A second room will open in November, and the facility will continue to expand until it reaches its capacity of four or five rooms.
