Abstraction

Abstraction is a mysterious game that put Quebec City on TERPECA map in 2022 with its great debut at 25th place that year. With Judgment Day winning a TERPECA award in 2024 (by the same company – Eliviascape) and interesting light-hearted games by Cabinet of Mysteries they make Quebec City a very good addition to a blockbuster-filled Montreal trip.

This game certainly has an interesting vibe. The setting is creepy, but not serial killer/asylum-creepy, but more of mysterious-creepy, which is also expressed well with its puzzling title – Abstraction. It has an intriguing and open-ended story. After the game there is a debrief, where the story is explained in details, which in the case of English-speaking groups is done in a non-conventional way of handing each player a (pretty long) printed out explanation of the story. This was done in this way to make sure that the language barrier is not a problem since otherwise it’d be easy for some aspects to be lost. This measure is to be appreciated, but on the other side, it may cool off some post-game enthusiasm. Moreover, I have to admit that even with the provided explanation the narrative was rather vague to me, but I think it’s one of these cases where the story of the room is up for individual interpretations and is what each player makes it out to be (which again matches the game’s title).

However, set design and story are not the only original aspects of this game – puzzles deserve being mentioned too. They are well thought out and match the game’s abstract design. I especially reminisce one of the late game puzzles, which we have solved correctly, but we were still doubting if what we’ve done was the correct solution, because it was so abstract and original for an escape room puzzle – certainly one of the best I’ve seen!

If you want to play an original and thought-provoking game, head to Quebec City and play Abstraction!