Topeka Night Out: NOTO Escapes

Photos by Emma Highfill, Rose Wheat Photography

Looking for a unique and fun night out with your family, friends, or colleagues? Try tackling
a challenge as a group, working together to solve a puzzle at NOTO Escapes. Co-owners Kelly Gerhardt and Nena Hug started NOTO Escapes because they loved the rush and fun of teaming up for an escape room experience, and they wanted to share that joy with others.

“We love to laugh, and really enjoyed the adrenaline and bonding provided from an escape room,” Hug said. “This is a high energy activity. Solving a puzzle or completing a task feels good. It gets you hyped up, excited and happy. We wanted to give groups an opportunity to experience that energy and challenge for themselves.”

ESCAPING FROM REALITY

So, what is an escape room, exactly? Gerhardt spelled it out for those who have not yet tried the experience.

“An Escape Room or Puzzle Game is a game with a series of puzzles that you have to solve to achieve the objective in a set time,” Gerhardt said. “There are a variety of puzzles used. You willusually find a variety of number, letter and key locks that can be solved by cyphers or riddles. Many rooms now provide tactile, audio and visual games as well.”

The name “escape room” became popular for this type of puzzle game because the original versions were based on a 2007 video game that focused on breaking out of a room in a virtual space. In real life, due to fire and building codes, locking people in is not a great idea if you want to keep people safe, so there are no locks on the doors at NOTO Escapes. The focus is on solving a puzzle to meet a goal.

“The objective could be to break into the next room, find the antidote to stop a zombie apocalypse or to simply find the leprechaun’s hidden treasure,” Gerhardt said. “A good storyline is what makes the game immersive, so that teams want to dive into an “escape” from reality. Once you step

in, we set the clock and say GO, nobody even thinks about that door. The goal is to beat the clock.”

CUSTOMIZED EXPERIENCES

NOTO Escapes provides private game rooms for whoever you can wrangle to assist you in solving puzzles and meeting the objective. Each booking has its very own gamemaster to tender the game to your level of expertise, and the commitment can be as short as 20 minutes. For individuals or smaller groups who want to play, NOTO Escapes can usually team people up, though COVID-19 restrictions have led to booking private groups only, for the time being.

“One of the things that NOTO Escapes prides itself on is our 20-minute POP UP rooms,” Gerhardt said. “Theserooms are regularly rotated and specifically designed with beginning Escape Room enthusiasts, children and small groups in mind. With the flat booking fee, it is also a cost-effective outing so the whole family can enjoy a night out in the NOTO Arts District.”

NOTO Escapes is not a one-size- fits-all venue, but a customized gaming experience, tailored to each group.

“We get to interact with people,” Hug said, “so we watch their body language to see if they are having fun, or if they are getting frustrated. We guide as needed, or step back and let them roll, depending on what’s needed. Some groups want no clues whatsoever, others just want to relax and take it easy.”

The experience isn’t over after the puzzle is solved, either.

“We recommend that groups plan for 30 minutes to an hour to talk about what they did after the puzzle
is solved,” Hug said. “There are some great places right here in NOTO to grab a drink or a bite to eat, which works out perfectly.”

RIGHT PLACE & SPACE

NOTO Escapes first opened on May 1, 2019, in the NOTO Arts District, and was originally located above Amused Gallery. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and NOTO Escapes became such a popular destination that Hug and Gerhardt decided to move into a ground-level building that is directly across the street from their previous location so that they could expand and customize their space for more twists and intrigue.

The new location had been used for storage for several years, and had been mostly vacant for nearly 50 years, so a good cleaning and some significant remodeling was necessary to prepare the space. With the generous help of friends and family, they removed flood mud and debris and built the rooms, gaining experience in demo, framing, drywall, and painting as part of the process.

“It’s hard to believe it’s the same space,” Gerhardt said, “and now we have the flexibility to build secret passages or move walls to have a better experience or change up a game if we need to.”

Despite the work that it took to prepare the space, Hug and Gerhardt knew from the moment that they began planning their business that NOTO was the right location.

“When we were deciding on our first location, we wanted to join a community that we could grow, learn and flourish with,” Gerhardt said, “and there is no better place for that than the NOTO Arts District.”

THE CHALLENGES OF 2020

As with many businesses, NOTO Escapes found 2020 a more challenging year to kick off in their new location than originally anticipated.

“We started our remodel of our new location in March and had planned to have a grand reopening on the First Friday in May to coordinate with our first anniversary. With the onset of COVID-19 and the accompanying restrictions, our remodel took a bit longer than expected.”

NOTO Escapes has always cleaned in between groups, but the ongoing situation with COVID-19 led them to raise their standard even higher.

“Our reopening will now be phased differently to allow plenty of time in-between private groups for deep cleaning and to reduce any potential overlap of groups on site,” Hug said.

NOTO Escapes is off to a great start, but Hug and Gerhardt are always looking for more ways to get the word out.

“Every day we hear ‘we didn’t even know there was an escape room in Topeka,’” Hug said. “We hope with our new stable location to be able to spend more time out in the community and raise awareness of what we have to offer.”

NOTO Escapes is available for birthday parties, corporate team building, and holiday parties. They even have a ‘team building’ patch available for Girl & Boy Scouts. In the future, they plan to grow into other areas of Topeka to feed the community’s need for entertainment and enjoyment with friends and family.

A PASSION PROJECT

Gerhardt and Hug note that NOTO Escapes is a passion project, as well as a business.

“We spend every available moment working on new ideas and puzzles when we are not working our full-time jobs,” Hug said. “There are many challenges in balancing it all, but the joy we have brought to others and that we have experienced on the journey has made it all worth it.”