Escape rooms are always a fun group activity! If you haven’t heard of an escape room before essentially it is a room filled with puzzles, where you have a set time (typically 45 minutes to 1 hour) to solve how to escape. They are a fantastic team building activity where you need to work together to solve a series of ciphers, puzzles, and challenges to escape. Typically as there is an assortment of puzzle types, there are different puzzles to suit the different skill sets of everyone in the group so each person can shine with their unique skill set.
ByWard Market Butcher at Jigsaw Escape Room
Disclosure: I was invited to try this room complimentary for review purposes. All views expressed are my own.
Yesterday, I tried The ByWard Market Butcher at Jigsaw Escape Room in Ottawa. In this room, you enter a butcher’s room lured by free steaks offered, only to find yourself trapped and the next victim on the chopping block. The Byward Market Butcher is Jigsaw Escape Room’s hardest room and only has a success rate of 5%.
With my team of 7 (Jigsaw Escape Rooms suggests between 4-12 people), we decided to tackle the room. I will give a spoiler-free review of the escape room so that you can try it for yourself. Within my team, there were 4 of us who have done over 20 escape rooms, giving us a group of expert escape room artists. The reason I mention my team’s background is to emphasize this room is HARD! By the time the time was over, we were just in the process of opening the door to escape so if that is considered a win or failure is debatable.
If you are up for the challenge, the ByWard Butcher offers plenty of unique and innovative puzzles that I’ve never seen before. I appreciated this room used a variety of skill sets, and my knowledge of shoes and cooking knives were both skills I was able to use in this room.
What is fantastic about the ByWard Butcher is that allows up to 12 people. There are so few escape rooms in Ottawa that permits a large group, and even fewer where they allow you to work together (typically you are divided off into small teams of 3-4 people). In the ByWard Butcher the entire time your team can work in the same space as a team, and there is more than enough space and puzzles to keep up to 12 people busy. As such it would make a fun spot for a party or group celebration, as Jigsaw Escape Room is in the ByWard Market so you can easily extend the party by going after for food or drink nearby.
While horror rooms are typically my least favorite theme (I hate horror films), I did enjoy the challenge of the ByWard Butcher. I would suggest if you don’t have many escape rooms under your belt you start with Jigsaw Escape Room’s Heist or my all time favorite at Jigsaw – Castle before you give the much more difficult ByWard Butcher a try.
Interested in trying one of the escape rooms at Jigsaw Escape Rooms? Book now.