“You can choose to walk the Path of Dark or the Path of Light. Battle your way through the realm of magic and spells, trying to sway the balance of power in your favour.”
This was my first visit to Fantescapes and I visited with a larger group than I would normally visit with. It was for a corporate team-building event. The hosts did a great job of breaking us into groups, securing our items, and general herding a bunch of people who didn’t know what to expect.
This room is very unique in that you are split into two teams and have to race against each other from one side to the other. Each team moves through a series of two smaller rooms before entering one larger, joint room, and then continue moving past that area into the starting teams area. In total, if you’re successful, each team will move through five different spaces.
This unique space allows up to 4 people per team to play at once. Very few spaces advertised for 8 players can actually do that. Yes – the first few areas are a little tight with four people but there’s enough to do that you’re all involved. Again, something quite rare. We made it to the central room before the other team so we had lots of space to move about without bumping into each other. However, we also made it into the next (much smaller area) before that team had completed their task and so we had to wait until they got out of the way.
The build itself is quite complicated and involves a mix of technology and physical puzzles. Some team members found that the numbers on the locks were just too small for them to read, especially in a slightly darker are. Accessibility in escape rooms is always a challenge while trying to maintain immersion, but I think something could be done here. The physical construction is a bit artificial to me. To expand on that, it feels like someone made an artificial space out of plywood – which they did. And it was a lot of work. But sometimes that thick mdf construction hurts the immersion.
There were some good ambient sounds and lighting. Noise from other rooms was non-existent.
A HUGE benefit to a room like this is that you can truly play it with just 3 people, moving from one end to the other, to 8 people racing against each other. And after that, you can all just switch sides and do it from the other perspective (light vs dark). This is likely why our host wouldn’t fill me in on the pieces of the room we missed.
Give it a shot! It’s a great team building escape room in Guelph.