Family owned and operated Missing Pieces offers four different escape rooms. Photo: Rachel Nadeau
Solving puzzles one piece at a time.
Owned, operated and designed by a local family, Missing Pieces is your one-stop-shop for all things problem solving–for fun.
Curated from a holiday scavenger hunt in the basement of their home in December of 2015, Dave and Sheryl Steinman knew that they wanted to take their passion for puzzles one step further.
Within a month of their makeshift escape room, Missing Pieces launched, and the family-owned facility opened 10 months later.
“We are bringing a massive amount of passion into this,” owner and CEO of Missing Pieces Matt Steinman says. “This is not something we got into just because of the business, but because it struck a chord with us, it hit home.”
All hands are on deck at this game site. Matt says that Dave Steinman, his dad, is a retired engineer and primarily is the source behind the construction of the props. Matt’s mom Sheryl is the customer service expert and decorator. His sister has a master’s degree in creative writing and is an active artist, so she focuses on each games’ visual design and writes the stories behind each puzzle. Matt’s older brother has a background in finance and manages the books whereas his younger brother is the automation and coding expert with his experience in robotics and technological systems.
With no shortage of ideas from this adventurous family, the venue houses four unique puzzles: Diamond Dilemma, Run Raiders, Cuckoo’s Clock and Final Frontier. Throughout these hour-long challenges visitors are encouraged to solve a variety of riddles, discover untold secrets and piece the puzzles together to find a way out of the space. But don’t be alarmed, there are always emergency exits readily available at your convenience.
The games are a combination of mystery, storytelling and strategy. All of which require the power of more than one brain. The process of problem solving is similar to organized chaos. With that, Matt advises that it is best to come with a larger group in order to increase the amount of ideas, communication and active teamwork.
Depending on the room, there is a maximum number of players that can partake in a game at one time. The average group size is eight players for the smaller rooms and ten players for the larger rooms.
“We set our capacity based on the number of puzzles that are in a room to keep people busy. We don’t want people standing around or being bored,” Matt says. “We want everyone to be involved and feel that they were a part of the game”
With multiple rooms to navigate through, this family strives to create a fun, interactive and electronic-free experience for people of all ages.
“I really believe that people want to work together, communicate together and interact with each other to have those bonding experiences without the interference of screens,” Matt says. “We love being an activity where you can ditch your phone, leave it aside and enjoy being there with the people you came with.”
Missing Pieces
5233 Edina Industrial Blvd.
Faceboook: Missing Pieces Escape Games
Twitter: @missingpiecesmn
