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A brand-new escape room in Burnaby will soon be pitting guests’ puzzle-solving abilities against the likes of pirates, aliens and dragons.
Bamboozled Entertainment Ltd. was created by Sarah and Mark Dallas, a sister and brother combo from Burnaby. The pair branched out to create their escape room using their four years of experience both playing and running other escape rooms in Vancouver. Together, the Dallas’ have created a new escape game experience focused on storytelling helped along with automated hints, characters that interact directly with players using voice-overs, music, video monitors and video projection.
Raising the bar
Sarah, who holds a bachelor's degree in performing arts and a diploma in arts entertainment management says running her escape room has been a goal since she first played in 2015. So far business has been a little slow thanks in part to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic but she says the players that have come through have good things to say.
"We've gotten some really good feedback from people, the reception from people has been really nice," Sarah said adding they are trying to "raise the bar" of Vancouver's escape rooms.
"A lot of the escape rooms haven't really evolved very much since they first opened so that's one of the things that we've been trying to do is we've got a lot more tech, we're trying to be a lot more immersive," Sarah said.
Sarah explained that many people’s perceptions of escape rooms are still based on panic room game variants where guests figure out how to get out of the room within a certain time. Wanting people to experience the whole story the escape rooms at Bamboozled automatically give tips to the participants.
"I think that's one of the things that people are pleasantly surprised about is that it's not just about escape it's more about the progression of going through the different rooms and discovering things," she said.
Pirates, aliens, dragons, oh my!
Mark Dallas is a graduate of the Vancouver Institute of Media Art’s 2D Character Animation Diploma and has created much of the art for the escape rooms. Mark’s animation skills have been applied to create a final boss battle in Bamboozled’s first escape room, Rainforest Ruins. The escape room takes guests into the ancient ruins of King Apuchay’s temple where participants explore the ruins and prevent a full-blown volcanic eruption.
The next escape room, Pirate Plunder is set to open no later than May 1. Two more rooms, Alien Odyssey and Legend of Dragons will both be open by the end of this summer.
In keeping with COVID-19 restrictions, the game room’s capacity is set for six people per theme. Bamboozled encourages all participants to stay within their residence members or core bubble when visiting our venue. For more information on booking and what Bamboozled is doing to keep guests safe, you can check out their website.
