New Fort Collins Business Locks Its Guests in a Room — For Fun, of Course!

It’s not a bar, restaurant or coffee shop – but it may be the next hot spot for a night out with friends in Old Town. Enigma is a new escape room experience in Fort Collins, and its doors will open this weekend (April 4).

Escape rooms, or live-action puzzles which you must solve in order to break out of, were a concept originally popular in Japan. Startup entrepreneurs Matt Sisson and Tommy West collaborated to create the very successful escape room, Enigma, in Boulder last fall. Sisson, who comes from a design background, and West, who is experienced in construction, are now expanding their business concept into Northern Colorado.

“[We thought], 'This is everything we do; this is building physical things, and creating a really cool experience for people, why not give it a try?'’” West said. “We sort of did it as an experiment more than anything in Boulder…and then it just took off, and people have just been enamored with the concept.”

The Enigma experience comes directly from the hands and minds of Sisson and West, and their goal is not only to generate challenging puzzles, but to create a getaway from reality.

“It’s entirely different than anything anyone has ever experienced before,” Sisson said. “When you enter the room, we’re taking your cell phones away so we’re removing technology, [and] we’re putting you in a locked room with ten of your friends. You have to figure out how to get out, and you have to problem solve with each other, so it’s a very different feeling than going out to a movie with your friends, or going out to the bars. It puts you in this zone and we try to work out every detail that removes you from reality.”

That means rule six is strictly enforced (yeah, we had to ask that one).

Enigma’s first experience in Fort Collins is a mid-century themed mystery, ‘The Missing Scientist, Part One.’ The set for which, Sisson and West have built and designed themselves, meticulously piecing together period-authentic elements, from the props and furniture in the room, to the music playing in the background. West describes it as being in a museum exhibit where you can actually touch things and play around.

“We try not to use new stuff, just because new stuff gives a very sterile feel to things,” West said. “So, we have a thrift shop circuit that we do in Boulder on the regular. We’ll go to eight or nine different thrift shops and spend the day doing that every month or two, and there’s the antique mall we just discovered in Fort Collins.”

When the escape room puzzles change every few months, so must the sets’ designs, leaving Sisson and West to physically recreate and reconstruct Enigma.

The Boulder location has attracted  a wide audience, ranging  from drunk college kids to senior citizens to corporate team building. Sisson and West stated that local startups are some of their biggest clients, and the escape rooms have been a great way for employers to see how new employees interact and work together as a team.

Although the idea of being locked in a room for an hour may seem daunting for some, the co-owners assure they have a number of safety measures to ensure that Enigma will be a good time for visitors of all ages— and it is not like the movie 'Saw.'

“We had to put that in [the FAQ],” Sisson said. “That’s like, one of the number one questions we get. ‘Is it scary?’ No. We didn’t want to have anything scary. We want this to be a very safe and fun environment.”

If you’re growing tired of the Old Town bar scene, and want to give your brain a fun night out (or take a trip back in time), you can now book your tickets for Enigma in Fort Collins, located at 151 S. College Avenue.

“Taking away technology is creating a really amazing time where you don’t have to be drinking at a bar or eating food,” West said. “Directly interacting, having a common goal; it creates something we forgot about in 2015.