Who we would play after Rush
We run sixteen of Melbourne's best escape rooms, which makes us the wrong people to ask for an impartial ranking and the right people to ask who we would play after Rush Escape Game.
So that is what this page is. Six operators we genuinely recommend, said plainly and without hedging, and then our own sixteen rooms in detail further down, matched to occasion, difficulty and how frightening you want the hour to be.
The reason we are comfortable doing this is arithmetic rather than generosity. An escape room is a single-play product. You cannot do the same room twice, so somebody who plays one great room and loves it becomes somebody who needs another twenty. Every operator in this city building something excellent makes our job easier. There is no version of this where a bad first experience somewhere else helps us.
The six
The Curium Experience
CollingwoodExtraction is a multi-level infiltration built around a portal device called The Machine, run out of a fictional members-only club, and it is genuinely physical: you crawl, climb and slide between spaces rather than standing in one room turning things over.
It holds a five star Google rating across more than a thousand reviews and has taken a Best of Morty award three years running, which puts it among the top few hundred rooms in the world as judged by the people who play the most of them.
Play it if: you want the most ambitious single room in Melbourne and you are physically up for it. Check the accessibility notes first, because the movement is part of the design.The Mystery Rooms
FitzroyFour rooms in an old wool factory on Napier Street, and the structure is the clever part. The Lost Tomb, The Medieval Quest and The Last Stand all have to be played before you are allowed into The Grimm Finale, with a story running across all four.
Almost nobody builds a campaign like that, because it asks you to come back three times before the payoff. A ticket includes a drink afterwards and there is a separate room to debrief in, which more venues should do.
Play it if: you want a series rather than a one-off, and you are the sort of group who will actually finish it.Adventure Rooms
Melbourne CBDTwo city venues, at Bourke Street Mall and Little Collins Street, both a short walk from Melbourne Central and Flinders Street. Rated 4.9 across more than 1,200 reviews, with rooms starting from around $40 a person.
They also take groups of up to fourteen in a single room, which nobody else in the city does at that scale, and their horror room, Abandoned Cabin, is rated PG rather than going hard.
Play it if: you are finishing work in the city and nobody wants to get on a train, or you have a group too big for a six-player room.LOST in Melbourne
Melbourne CBDImmersive, atmosphere-first design on Flinders Lane, and the horror is the reason people go. Their scariest room is regularly named the most frightening in the city by people who have played everything.
Play it if: you want CBD horror and you have already done ours. A very different flavour to what we build, and worth doing for the comparison alone.Ukiyo
MelbourneStory-led rather than puzzle-dense, and the choices your group makes change how the thing unfolds. The Crumbling Prince is a Japanese-set piece with a cherry blossom garden that draws openly on Studio Ghibli and Zelda. Deep Space: Divinity puts you aboard a failing research vessel with an AI companion.
It is not really an escape room in the traditional sense, and that is the point. Measure a venue by lock count and you will be confused. Measure it by whether you were genuinely somewhere, and it is one of the best things in the city.
Play it if: you care more about being inside a story than about the density of the puzzles.Containaphobia
GeelongNot Melbourne, and worth the hour down the freeway anyway. Horror-focused across the whole line-up and considerably harder than most things in the city. Mayhem Manor is restricted to eighteen and over, and Carnivorous requires exactly four players and only runs at night.
It is the venue Melbourne enthusiasts recommend to each other, which is the recommendation that actually counts.
Play it if: you have done the horror circuit here and want the thing that is genuinely a step up. Check the age and player rules before you drive.Venues open, close and rebuild, so check current rooms, prices and age limits on each operator's own site before you book.
Where we are not the answer
Stating this plainly, because a guide that recommends its author for everything is not a guide.
| If you want | Then |
|---|---|
| A room in the Melbourne CBD | We have none. Adventure Rooms, LOST in Melbourne and Curium are all in or close to the city. |
| More than six players in one room | Our rooms cap at six, and two cap at four. Adventure Rooms takes up to fourteen. |
| A drink and a debrief room on site | The Mystery Rooms includes one with a ticket and Curium has a club lounge. We do not cater, and our venues sit where the food already is. |
| A live actor in the room with you | Not us, in any room, in any season including Halloween. Some operators do it and for plenty of people that is the whole appeal. |
| Virtual reality | Several Melbourne venues run VR. We build physical sets only and have no plans to change that. |
| A story you shape rather than a puzzle you solve | Ukiyo. Ours are puzzle rooms with stories, not the other way around. |
| Horror harder than anything in Melbourne | Containaphobia in Geelong. |
Where we think we are worth the trip
Equally plainly, and each of these is checkable rather than a claim about quality.
Scale, if you have a group
Six rooms in one building at South Yarra means 36 people playing simultaneously, 24 at St Kilda, 18 at Hawthorn. Most operators run three or four rooms, so a group of thirty either splits across time slots or splits across venues. For a work party or a big birthday that is the difference between an event and a logistics problem.
Range within one building
Every venue spans several levels of our scare scale, so a group that cannot agree does not have to. The horror fans and the people who refuse book the same slot in different rooms and meet afterwards. St Kilda covers all four tiers under one roof.
Built here, and still being rebuilt
Every room is designed and fabricated by our own team rather than bought as a kit, and we rebuild rooms rather than retire them. HackSaw: Remastered at Chadstone is the original Hawthorn room rebuilt from the ground up a decade later, with precision the first build could not achieve.
We rate how scary and how hard separately, and publish the method
Fear and difficulty are different things, and most venues give you one number covering both. We rate every room on two independent scales and publish how we decide, including the times we have downgraded a room. It is the single most useful thing anyone can tell you before you book.
Suburbs
Four venues across the inner east, bayside, south east and inner south. If you are in Kew, Brighton, Glen Waverley or Prahran, one of ours is a short trip and everything else is a train into the city.
Choosing a horror room anywhere in Melbourne
Horror is where people most often book the wrong thing, so this applies whoever you book with. Three questions decide it, and the answers vary enormously between operators:
Is there a live actor? A performer produces sharp, repeated shocks. No performer means slower, accumulating dread. Neither is better and they are completely different hours. None of our sixteen rooms uses one.
Is it gory? Visceral horror and supernatural horror can sit at the same intensity and feel nothing alike. Of ours, HackSaw and HackSaw: Remastered are deliberately visceral; The Conjoining and It's Nightmare contain no blood at all.
Is it confined? The single most common reason somebody has a bad time. Ask before you book. Our three HackSaw rooms use tight spaces on purpose; the rest do not.
Our four scariest rooms compared works through this in detail, and the horror guide maps the whole genre to which room answers it.
And now ours
Below: all sixteen Rush rooms grouped by occasion, with difficulty, scare tier and venue for each. First-timers, date nights, families, horror, the hardest thing we have built, and large groups.
The Best Escape Rooms in Melbourne
Melbourne has a lot of escape rooms. These are ours: 16 rooms across four venues, all designed and built in-house, and among the best-reviewed in the city at 4.9 from more than 2,700 reviews. Below is the best Rush room for every occasion, from first-timers to the hardest thing we have built, so you can match the room to your group before you book.
Rush Escape Game runs 16 escape rooms across four Melbourne venues (South Yarra, Hawthorn, St Kilda and Chadstone), rated 4.9 from more than 2,700 reviews and all designed and built in-house. The hardest are Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible (5 out of 5, Chadstone). The scariest are HackSaw, HackSaw: Remastered, The Conjoining and It's Nightmare, all using set design, darkness and sound with no live actors. Best for first-timers: The Nine-Nine, Cluemanji and Treasure Island. Best for families: Monsterz, Cluemanji and The Nine-Nine.
The best Rush room for every occasion
Best for first-timers and beginners
New to escape rooms? Start with a 3-out-of-5 room that rewards teamwork over trivia. These are welcoming, well signposted and genuinely fun to solve, and none of them will scare anyone.
Rooms: The Nine-Nine Cluemanji Treasure Island Monsterz
How to beat an escape room →Best for a date night
An escape room beats dinner-and-a-movie: an hour of working together, then dinner to talk it over. Pick a fun, atmospheric room, or a scary one if you want the grab-each-other kind of night.
Rooms: Alice in Wonderland Secret Agent Man It's Nightmare
Date ideas in Melbourne →Best for families and kids
All-ages rooms with no scares, built so younger players always have something to do. Under-16s play with a participating adult, and bigger families split across rooms and compete.
Rooms: Monsterz Cluemanji The Nine-Nine Treasure Island Game of the Dragon
Escape rooms for kids & families →Scariest, and best for horror fans
Our terrifying tier uses darkness, sound and set design to unsettle you. There are no live actors and nothing touches you. HackSaw started it all, The Conjoining is our haunted house, and It's Nightmare is pure Stephen King dread.
Rooms: HackSaw HackSaw: Remastered The Conjoining It's Nightmare
Horror & scary escape rooms →Hardest and most difficult
Want a real challenge? Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible are our only 5-out-of-5 rooms, both at Chadstone, dense, layered and built for experienced players. Several 4-out-of-5 rooms push close behind.
Rooms: Da Vinci Down Under Mission:Possible Strangest Thing
How to beat an escape room →Best for large groups and teams
Every room holds up to 6 (Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible hold 4), and bigger groups split across rooms at one venue and race each other. South Yarra fits the largest crews across its six rooms.
Rooms: HackSaw: Chapter 2 Game of the Dragon The Last of Them
Escape rooms for large groups → Team building →All 16 rooms, by venue
Every room is a unique build with its own theme, difficulty and scare level. Under-16s play with a participating adult; every room runs 60 minutes.
South Yarra · six rooms
Hawthorn · three rooms
St Kilda · four rooms
Chadstone · three rooms
Why Rush
We have been building escape rooms in Melbourne since 2014, all in-house, across four venues. That 4.9 rating comes from more than 2,700 real reviews, and it is why groups keep coming back to work through the whole lineup.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the best escape room in Melbourne?
- It depends on your group. For a first game, try The Nine-Nine or Cluemanji; for a scare, HackSaw or The Conjoining; for the hardest, Da Vinci Down Under or Mission:Possible. All 16 rooms are rated 4.9 across more than 2,700 reviews.
- How many escape rooms does Rush have?
- 16 rooms across four Melbourne venues: South Yarra (6), St Kilda (4), Hawthorn (3) and Chadstone (3).
- Which is the scariest escape room?
- Our terrifying tier: HackSaw, HackSaw: Remastered, The Conjoining and It's Nightmare. All use set design, darkness and sound, with no live actors and nothing touching you.
- Which escape room is best for kids?
- The not-scary, all-ages rooms: Monsterz, Cluemanji, The Nine-Nine and Treasure Island. Players under 16 are welcome with a participating adult.
- How much is an escape room in Melbourne?
- From $70 per player, with Crew Night (4-6 players, $250-$300) and Cheap Tuesday (from $45 per player). See prices and deals.
- How long does an escape room take?
- Each room runs 60 minutes; allow about 90 minutes on site with the briefing and a photo at the end.