Unlocking entertainment

Even on an international vacation, Laura Hawkins wanted to escape.

The Winnipeg entrepreneur was travelling through Europe in 2014 with her husband, Allan Hawkins, and their daughter, Shea Silva, and everywhere they went — Dublin, Athens and Paris — the family visited an escape room.

The concept, where players are confined to a themed room and have to discover clues and solve puzzles to find their way out within a set time limit, had yet to take off in Canada. Silva discovered them while researching what she and her parents could do to entertain themselves on their European holiday.

The family has always enjoyed spending time together playing board games, Hawkins says, so the idea of tackling immersive puzzles was right up their alley. By the time they finished their third escape room, they were hooked and talking about starting an escape room facility of their own.

“I just remember the ending,” Hawkins recalls. “We finished with about 30 seconds to go, and the adrenaline rush of that last 30 seconds was so unbelievable.”

Hawkins has a picture of the trio in Paris, in the third escape room they tried.

“It’s a big thing for us,” she says. “When we decided, it was that day. And it changed my life.”

In January 2015, the family opened Enigma Escapes on Lorimer Boulevard (across from the Golf Dome). It was one of the first escape room businesses in Winnipeg. It’s since grown to include two additional locations: one on Keenleyside Street and another in Grant Park Shopping Centre.

Combined, the three locations offer 14 different rooms. They include Blackbeard’s Brig, in which players must escape the clutches of the evil pirate; Poseidon’s Promise, where participants explore puzzles relating to mythological Atlantis, sea creatures and sustainability; and Murder at Mardi Gras, in which participants are the prime suspects in a murder and must clear their names.

Hawkins and her family designed the rooms themselves, and built them alongside a handful of subcontractors.

But the family’s influence on escape rooms stretches beyond Canada.

In 2016, the family, which includes son Shaun Gray and his wife Kaleigh, launched Gamemasters Escape Solutions. The company supplies hotels, resorts and other businesses with turnkey escape rooms.

Gamemasters has installed more than 100 escape rooms in more than 30 cities in Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean. In recent months, Hawkins says, she’s received inquiries from hotels and amusement parks in Greece, Nepal and the United Arab Emirates.

“Realistically, hotels and resorts are a great place for these rooms to be,” Hawkins says. “If the day is windy or cold or it’s raining, here’s something that the hotel can offer (guests) which is going to bring in revenue for the hotel.”

Hawkins designs the rooms and leads the teams that build them. Her husband, a civil servant by day, designs and installs all of the electronics.

In late 2024, Gamemasters installed two escape rooms in Atlantis Paradise Island, an ocean-themed casino resort in the Bahamas. The resort spent US$300,000 on the two rooms, which are updated versions of the Poseidon’s Promise and Blackbeard’s Brig rooms Enigma Escapes offers in Winnipeg.

According to an industry report, there were more than 2,000 escape room facilities in the United States in December 2025 — up from about two dozen in 2014.

The report by Room Escape Artist, a website that publishes escape room reviews, and Morty, an app that helps users find and rate escape rooms around the world, notes the industry experienced huge early growth in the U.S.: up 317 per cent in 2015, followed by 800 per cent in 2016. By 2019, growth had levelled off to two per cent.

The industry shrank during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a 4.3 per cent decrease through mid 2020, followed by a 7.5 per cent decrease over the following six months through early 2021. By mid 2022, the industry had stabilized at the current facility count and has remained stable ever since.

Escape rooms remain popular for a number of reasons, says Scott Nicholson, professor of game design at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario.

“People are inherently curious,” he says. “The idea of going into a secret space and (being) given permission to look anywhere you want in that secret space is something that’s engaging to people. It’s exciting to people.”

Escape rooms require little training and participants don’t have to prepare. Whereas most group games are competitive, escape rooms are co-operative, Nicholson says, adding well-designed escape rooms allow everyone to have “a hero moment” where they contribute to their team’s success.

“The co-operative nature gives us an activity to come together and work together and achieve something as a group.”

For Hawkins, offering groups a safe, fun activity they can enjoy together — whether it is friends, family or work colleagues — is meaningful.

Hawkins recalls being in a store one day and overhearing two women talking about an escape room. When she asked them about it, it turned out they had visited Enigma Escapes.

“They had played two weeks before (during) a company teambuilding event and they were still talking about it,” Hawkins says. “All of that, of course, makes me feel very proud.”

Designing escape rooms in 2026 requires walking a fine line, she adds.

Some people who design them don’t like the idea of opening a box with a lock because they want the room to be more technical.

For Gamemasters, though, that feeling of opening a lock is important.

“I always compare it to winning on a slot machine,” she says. “You can’t manufacture that moment.

“When you solve a puzzle that you’ve been struggling with and it comes to you, it’s an adrenaline rush. And people talk about their games long after they finish playing and they remember the puzzles that they solved and they feel good about themselves for solving them.”

Since the industry has stabilized, escape room facilities are finding other activities to add to their offerings, Nicholson says, such as food and beverage options, axe throwing, rage rooms (where participants smash items) and karaoke.

“One of the things I talk about with escape room owners is (that) a path into staying stable is to connect your escape room with another organization,” says Nicholson, who designs escape rooms for museums and libraries.

“I think for (Gamemasters), their direction is a good one.”

Hawkins is looking forward to seeing where Gamemasters goes next. In the meantime, she delights in thinking about where the company has already been.

“I enjoy the idea that tonight in Hawaii, people will be playing our rooms.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca