A lone lightbulb hangs from the ceiling of a small room. The bloodstained walls are scrawled with messages of distress from previous victims.
But it’s not a scene out of a horror movie – it’s Krakit, Burnaby’s only escape room game, and you have to get out before you meet the same fate.
“Previously, there were people locked up in here that left clues behind,” said Buzz Comartin, who runs Krakit on North Road with his wife and in-laws. “It’s up to you and your team to solve the clues, riddles, find keys, open puzzles, to get out of the room.
“You’ve just kind of got to tear the room apart.”
With the popularity of escape room games on the rise, Comartin and his wife were inspired to design their own after trying one in Richmond.
“We were like, ‘This is kind of cool,’ but they were kind of hokey,” he said. “Their decorations were really out of the dollar store.
“We thought, we’ve got better stuff at home.”
The Comartins – who are big into Halloween – immediately started putting together ideas for their own escape game. Fast forward to mid-October and they opened the 2,000-square-foot facility with several themed rooms.
In Asylum, you’ve been wrongly committed to a mental hospital and need to get out before the doctor permanently sedates you. The Butcher Room pits you against the clock to get away before you end up on a meat hook, and Zombie Apocalypse has you searching for a remedy to the widespread zombie virus as hoards of the undead clamour at your door.
It might seem like a hands-on version of a grisly, R-rated Hollywood slasher flick, but Comartin said it’s more PG-13.
“We just had a bunch of 14-year-old girls do a birthday party through the butcher room and they had a blast,” he said. “It’s not overly gory, it’s just more of the ambiance.
“We get a lot of dates coming through – first dates, you see what somebody does under pressure. They get 45 minutes, and if the date sucks, you leave,” he added with a laugh.
The last room – which changes every few months – is based on Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and is aimed at the more family-oriented crowd.
“The idea in here is that you need to find Santa Claus,” said Comartin. “Jack has stolen him and you need to find him and bring Christmas back.”
Each room has a back story, which Comartin says is also part of the puzzle. Groups of two to six people are tasked with breaking out, which means cracking combination locks, solving math problems and acing tests to get out the door.
If you get stuck, the room has two help lines – kind of like the phone-a-friend lifeline from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? – which page staff to provide some assistance.
But don’t be discouraged if you don’t beat the game in time. It’s meant to be challenging, and Comartin pegged the overall success rate between 10 and 14 per cent.
“It’s not easy,” he said, “but a lot of other escape rooms are closer to one or two per cent.
“When we left (the room in Richmond), we thought, why do they make it so hard, that nobody wins?”
That said, it’s not impossible to get out of the rooms with time to spare.
“Somebody just got the record in the Asylum with 11 minutes left on the clock,” said Comartin. “The average group has two locks left when their time is up.
“The previous record was four minutes, so they crushed it.”
Those who make it out in time get to have their photo taken with Krakit’s “Stanley Cup,” a brainless, severed zombie head named Stanley.
But if you don’t make it out, Comartin said the staff at Krakit won’t kick you out without showing you the ending, unlike other escape rooms.
“We’re one of the only places that show you a little bit more,” he said. “I’ll go in when people are working on a puzzle and say, ‘This is the answer. This is how close you were.’
“It’s friendlier than saying, ‘OK, you’re done.’”
Comartin said he’s happy to offer something other than films, bowling and gambling as a form of nighttime entertainment.
“The need is out there for entertainment, and we’re hopefully filling that.”
Krakit is located at 4035 North Rd., south of Lougheed Town Centre and next to North Road Auto Repair. For more information, check krakit.ca.
