Abstraction

Eliviascape (Quebec City, Canada)

Time limit: 70 minutes

Age limit: Under 13 requires adult

Player limit: 2-8

Difficulty: Medium

Awards: TERPECA Top Rooms No. 25 (2022), TERPECA Finalist (2023-2025), Best of Morty (2023, 2025), Golden Lock Award (2023)

Date visited: July 2026

Quebec City was originally not in our itinerary due to time constraints, but thankfully, the escape room community convinced me that it was worth shaving a couple of days off Toronto and making a side trip from Montreal (3-hour drive) to play at Eliviascape, a TERPECA mainstay and home of some of the best horror games in all of Canada.

We left early in the morning and traffic was relatively smooth. After a nice Italian lunch at Bossini, which is literally right next door, we entered Eliviascape to play our first game of the day, Abstraction. Here are my thoughts.

• Abstraction was a banger of a room, one with a fantastic mystery at the heart of the story and puzzles that hint at the truth.

• We started the game in an unassuming hospital lobby, but the game soon took a darker turn. I would call this more of a psychological thriller with supernatural horror elements. It was more unsettling and eerie than genuinely frightening, save for perhaps the brief but thrilling finale.

• There were multiple spaces to explore, and each section had its own distinctive theming. On the whole, I would say the set is very strong and quite big, but we did find it too dark in some parts, rendering it difficult to see some of the props/puzzles clearly.

• The puzzles were varied and generally flowed well, especially in the first half of the game. Pretty much all the puzzles were tech-based and thematic, and there were some super interesting concepts and ideas we had not seen before.

• We did not find this a particularly difficult room, though there was one puzzle towards the end where we weren't 100% sure what we were doing was right but we kind of fudged our way to the solution.

• We didn't encounter any broken tech, but in one section of the game our GM accidentally played French audio instead of English. I initially thought that was intended and we somehow managed to figure out the answer (probably even faster because we didn't just stand there listening to the entire audio clip), but we were told after the game that this was an error on their part.

• There was a live actor in the game, but he/she was used very sparingly yet effectively.

• We raced through the game, escaping with 25 minutes remaining, so naturally we didn't really have a full grasp of the story. However, when our GM explained the story at the end and pointed out all imagery and metaphors that we missed, it gave us a much deeper appreciation for the design of the game.

Escape time: 45 out of 70 minutes

Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun
A	A	A	A-	A

Verdict: An unsettling psychological thriller with an atmospheric, immersive set and a fantastic underlying mystery that connects its various creative puzzles and gameplay.

OVERALL RANK:

H	E	Z	J
A	B+	A	A