paradigmQ Escape Games in Vancouver, WA
paradigmQ is a fun, exciting, and unique company with the best and most ingenious interactive escape games anywhere! Do you want to solve a murder mystery on a moving train? Or perhaps find Sasquatch in a cabin in the woods? You can even go back in time to a western saloon or a futuristic space bar! At paradigmQ Escape Rooms, the possibilities are endless!
Challenge friends, family, and co-workers to an unforgettable in-person experience—but don’t delay! You only have 60 minutes to find the clues, solve the puzzles, work together, and win the room.
paradigmQ is perfect for events, date nights, family fun, or even showing out-of-town friends a great time! Create memories and celebrate a birthday party! Host your wedding party! Whatever you are planning, our unique experiences and amazing Game Masters will ensure that you have a great time. So…
Are You Game?
Our History
We set out a decade ago to bring escape rooms to the greater Portland/Vancouver area. After a grueling 18 months of searching, securing permits, building walls, making props, testing—and retesting—our puzzles, we finally opened at the end of 2015 with our first location, Escape Games PDX.
Our mission is to offer unique experiences created by local artists, builders, and designers. The first room we launched was Sherlock’s Secret, then quickly Prison Break, and Portlandia. With our unique puzzle-play focused approach, demand began to grow for even more interesting and amazing experiences. But with our starting location full—it didn’t take long to realize that we needed another.
In the fall of 2019, we opened paradigmQ Escape Rooms, starting with the incredibly fun dueling experiences Out of the Past and Into the Future. We then developed what is now our most popular and beloved room of the facility: Sasquatch on Site. There was another room that we built during this time, but I forget what it was. We soon followed with one of our most killer rooms, Murder on the Express, which has proven to be our best offering for mystery—and puzzle—fans alike.
With tens of thousands of people who have played our rooms, we are incredibly grateful for the community of players, enthusiasts, and first-timers who support us. They have told us time-and-time again that they appreciate our impressive scenic design, clever robust puzzle paths, and player-focused goals. We hope to continue our mission and develop better and better experiences for the decades to come!
ANYONE CAN ESCAPE!
A CONTESTED HISTORY OF ESCAPE GAMES
If you ask 10 escape enthusiasts “what was the first escape room?” you’re likely to get 11 different answers. While the history of escape rooms can be as hard to decipher as a one-time pad, here is our attempt to puzzle-piece the timeline of events:
Modern escape games began online with video games such as the flash-game Crimson Room (2004) or the mobile game The Room (2012). In 2007, the Japanese company SCRAP developed Real Escape Game, the first popularized in-person escape room. Then in 2011, escape rooms began opening up all over Asia; Europe soon after. While there were precursors to modern escape rooms in the United States—such as 5Wits—the U.S. didn’t begin to catch the escape room craze until about 2013 when Seattle-based Puzzle Break opened the first game stateside. By the end of 2014 there were an estimated dozen escape rooms located in the US. We opened our first location, Escape Games PDX, in 2015. Today, it’s estimated there’s about 50,000 escape rooms worldwide.
During the escape room boom of the late 2010s, there were a seemingly endless number visions for what an escape room could be. Do you have horror experiences? Live actors in the room? Limited hints? Access to your phone? Each company offered, and continues to offer, its interpretation on the genre with its own quirks and specialities. We also began to see escape room media during this time. HBO, Ford, and NBC all hosted their own escape experiences. TV shows like Bob’s Burgers, The Big Bang Theory, and Portlandia have featured episodes where their characters play in an escape room.
But as a live-action experience, best enjoyed in the company of peers, friends, and family, the global pandemic starting in 2020 was a particularly damaging for the industry. Many amazing companies and experiences closed during, or as a result of, this challenging time. Of the companies who survived, many were the ones who were able to switch to online experiences. We ourselves converted our rooms into “avatar rooms,” in which a live-actor in the room would execute the will of the players over a video conference call. We also quickly developed take-home or online-only games, such as our Amnesia Online experience or Film Noir: The Black Box Mystery.
And that brings us to today, where—despite the challenges—new escape room companies continue to open, and seasoned companies like us continue to develop new and interesting experiences. We are honored that our amazing community of players have chosen to play our games throughout the years. It’s really you who makes the difference.
Thank you for supporting us.
