June 29

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Captive – Cabinet of Curiosities

Posted by on June 29, 2015 in Downtown Toronto | Leave a comment

Captive is located in Downtown Toronto, near Yonge and Dundas (on Elm St.).  We were eager to return because Charlotte and Dracula’s Library really left their mark on us.  Click here read our original review

We were invited to play the BETA of Cabinet of Curiosities.  We returned with our friends at Escape Room Addict, Manda, Errol, their friend Mags and EGR’s Steve.  Shaun and Marina were just as pumped to see us as we were to see them.  We’d love to share all their great stories, but lets get on with the review.

*Sidenote:  As mentioned above this review covers the BETA of this room.  Like with any BETA there will be issues.

Creativity and Design (aka its Fancy level): – Was it inventive ? Did it fit the theme?
Score : 5.0 of 5.0

Long story short Cabinet of Curiosities is Captive’s take on a heist.  Their high quality props with clever storytelling sell the room very well.  Where most heists take the route of immersing you with tech (like lasers or fancy alarms), the fun parts of this room was finding out: 1. what you were supposed to steal  2. who you are stealing this for.  Another interesting choice in their design is a competitive aspect of the heist (which is tied to the story).  The room starts off with two teams that are separated and you have the option to race to the artifacts or work together to escape.  (In our case we were racing to the artifacts but eventually worked together).


Bells and Whistles: Was it just lockboxes throughout the Room?
Score:  4.0 of 5.0

The biggest problem with writing a review for Captive is unlike the majority of other escapes they don’t try to impress you with tech, they do it with immersion.  There are plenty of lockboxes, but there are also interesting puzzles that make good use of their unique props.  Because of the fusion of puzzles with the theme, they definitely get points for creatively trying to bridge that gap and we also didn’t experience any technical issues.

Intuitive (aka Frustration Level):  Was it solvable? or Did you have to be inside the creators mind to solve it?
Score:  4.5 of 5.0

This room was their most challenging so far, however there was enough information and direction to make the puzzles solvable.  Our only issue was with one of the starting puzzles that we needed to ask for a hint.  However we should note that they already have plans to change it so that would earn them a perfect score (and again we played the BETA of the room).  The room is 60 minutes (their others are 45) which is appropriate for this room given the difficulty and number of puzzles.

The room uses a door-bell system, which calls in the gamemaster which we had no issues with.

Staff Support/Price : Were they friendly? Were they helpful? What was the Damage?

If we haven’t gushed enough of how great Shaun and Marina are, we wished more owners would be as enthusiastic and escape-loving as they are (they might even love escapes more than us).

The current price is $27 per person.  You can get a $2 discount if you check in on facebook and at $25 per person, its a comparable cost to their competition in the downtown core.

Overall: Captive continues to produce quality games.  The score may not reflect it but we loved Cabinet of Curiosities and for a BETA, the game was very polished.  With Marina and Shaun at the helm of Captive we only see continued success as they pour their heart and souls into their rooms.

For more information check out:
captiverooms.com/
43 Elm St. Suite 200
Toronto, ON
647-345-(GAME)