NO ESCAPING SUCCESS
Mitch Bresciani, of Mystery Mansion escape rooms, puts on tasselled gloves in the Drag Task Force room, one of the city company's online games that are gaining global attention. In the escape room, a host wears a camera and acts as an avatar for players.
Mystery Mansion may have temporarily closed its doors, but the company has opened a window to a whole new world with its online escape rooms.
Before the pandemic, Mystery Mansion offered escape games for groups of people that contained puzzles. During the initial lockdown, the local company decided to try to adapt the social experience to be played online.
“It's kind of like a mix between a normal escape room experience, but with some live theatre immersion into it as well,” said Mitch Bresciani, a co-owner and manager of Mystery Mansion.
Mystery Mansion started out by adapting one of its existing escape rooms for online play. After that proved popular, the decision was made to create two new escape rooms designed solely to be played over the internet.
So far, the online escape rooms have been a global hit. Bresciani said the majority of their players are from the United States, but others have also been from Europe. The company recently decided to close down its physical escape rooms again due to the rise in COVID-19 cases, and is currently only offering online rooms.
Mystery Mansion has even received international accolades for one of its online rooms, Drag Task Force, which was a collaboration between the company and local drag queen Flo Mingo.
In the room, players take on the role of civilians recruited into the Drag Task Force. The room features local drag queens from Saskatchewan and Alberta, who have had their powers taken away by the villain Ruby Hymen.
Drag Task Force was chosen to be among the top 25 nominees for best online escape rooms by the Top Escape Rooms Project, which hands out enthusiasts' choice awards each year to the best escape rooms in the world.
“I never would have expected that we would have even been noticed or been thought of by places around the world,” said Bresciani.
The online escape rooms work by having a host strap on a camera and join a Zoom call with the participants. The players give commands to the host in order to complete tasks and puzzles in a way Bresciani said isn't too different from how someone controls a character in a video game.
Bresciani said he actually prefers hosting the online rooms. For in-person escape rooms, the host explains the rules and then leaves, but hosting an online room means more interaction with the players.
“I personally prefer hosting the live avatar rooms over the in-person rooms mainly because I love chatting with people and I love being able to talk to people and joke around and have a good time,” said Bresciani.
The other online-only room Mystery Mansion offers, Night Terrors, is on the creepier side. The game features a character named Alex, who has been put into a hypnotic sleep in an effort to find out what's causing his night terrors. Players take on the role of Alex's subconscious, and must aid him during his nightmares to find out what's going on.
District 3 Escape Rooms has also been offering online rooms since June. During a phone interview on Friday, co-owner David Ma was getting ready to host a session with a group from the United Kingdom. Ma said the online escape rooms are becoming an alternative for office Christmas parties, since workplaces are unable to gather in person this year.
Ma said the online rooms are popular with dedicated fans of escape rooms, who want to seek out escape experiences elsewhere in the world.
“You're getting groups of players who have done hundreds of rooms. So they're like `Oh, we can do rooms from around the world now. Let's try them out,'” said Ma.
One of the best compliments Bresciani said he's heard from players is that some were stressed about the COVID-19 pandemic, and the escape room gave them a chance to forget about it all for an hour.
“Out of all of the negatives, that's one positive for us was that it forced us to get a little bit creative and come up with something new to adapt to it, which actually it's been quite fun,” said Bresciani.
I never would have thought that we would have even been noticed or been thought of by places around the world.