This week marked a very cool occurrence – City Limits Escape Rooms had a grand opening event in Volo, IL. Tours, snacks, giveaways, and a ribbon cutting… It was a special event in many ways, but escape room enthusiasts have some particularly special reasons to be excited. What are those reasons?
Reason #1: The rescue of an award-winning escape room
Typically when an escape room closes, it’s the end of the road. I always hate watching favorite rooms go away, and I always wish there was some way to archive and preserve the content.
City 13 Escape Rooms closed its doors forever in early 2025. It was a unique business. The individual games were all part of a larger city set, and you walk through the immersive city set past multiple locations until you get to the one featuring your game. The full city could be combined into a four hour (!) escape room experience using four rooms plus all the spaces in between. This “Save the City” game was a critical darling and won many awards. Then it went away, seemingly forever.
City Limits rescued the games and completely reconstructed them in a new space. Not only does this give new life to the games, but it offers them to a brand new audience over fifty miles away.
Reason #2: Adding to the legacy of Twisted Limits
The owners of City Limits are no strangers to escape rooms. Joe, the mastermind behind City Limits, already designed award winning escape rooms at Twisted Limits in McHenry, IL. I saw the perfect reconstruction of City 13’s games, and I’m not sure it could be done by someone who isn’t already a master of the craft.
Twisted Limits was one of the first escape rooms to have mindblowing environmental twists and interconnected stories for its rooms. Even today, both elements are rare (there may be less than ten locations like this in the US). Now northern Illinois has two locations with this very unique setup.
Reason #3: Location synergy
There are a few unique elements about the City Limits location that make it a draw. First off, the building itself has more to do than just escape rooms. City Limits will have a game show room, which I can’t wait to try. The building already has a race car simulator and VR experience room. The building is adding a board game cafe. All these attractions are less than half a mile from the Volo Auto Museum, a large attraction in its own right with a huge selection of famous TV and movie automobiles and other unique collections.
Volo is becoming an entertainment destination in its own right, and City Limits is a great part of that. Get to the room early? Hang out, grab a snack, play a game. Want to decompress after playing? Grab a drink. There’s really good synergy in Volo for a full day of entertainment with minimal planning.
To conclude, the event was a blast, and there’s a lot to look forward to. There was a dirty soda bar, City Limits cookies, soft serve, and plenty of chances to check out the new games. I’ll conclude with some photos from the event. I fondly remember treating my nephew to an escape room at the Armory room and how excited he got when we called our team the “Spider Mans.” I’m excited that many more will be able to play these games!
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