Escape Rooms in Hawthorn | Rush Escape Game

Three immersive escape rooms on Glenferrie Road, a 150-metre walk from Glenferrie Station, with the easiest parking of all our venues. Choose a room below to see live times and book.

Which room should you book at Hawthorn?

Three rooms, three completely different registers, and one of them is the room that made Rush a horror company. Hawthorn is the smallest venue with the sharpest contrast between its rooms.

We rate every room on two separate scales, because how hard a room is and how frightening it is are different things. Hawthorn is the clearest illustration of why that matters, and the numbers below surprise most people.

The counterintuitive part. The scary room is the easiest and the family room is the hardest. Strangest Thing is four out of five on puzzles and rated Spooky. HackSaw is three out of five and rated Terrifying. That is deliberate: fear costs you concentration, so a room built to frighten you does not also need to defeat you, and a room the whole family can play does not have to be easy.

The venue where the horror started

HackSaw at Hawthorn is the original. It is the room that turned Rush from a company with a scary room into a company known for horror, and everything frightening we have built since is downstream of what we learned in it. There are now three HackSaw rooms across Melbourne. This is the one they came from, and it is still the one we send people to first.

The reason is its rating. At three out of five on puzzles it is the most approachable of our terrifying rooms, which means a group that has never done a horror escape room can get through it while being thoroughly frightened. That is a better first horror experience than a room that scares you and then beats you.

Around it sit two rooms with no horror in them at all, which makes this a small venue that still handles a mixed group. Somebody can do the trap horror while the rest of the family does a comedy detective caper in the next room, and everyone meets in the middle afterwards.

Booking for a group

Each room takes two to six players, so up to 18 people can play at the same time across the three rooms.

Four to six players in a room is a better hour than two or three for most groups. A six-player room with two people in it is a much harder game, and if you are a pair who want a genuine challenge, the two rooms built for small teams are at Chadstone.

Parties, celebrations and work groups

Kids birthdays. The Nine-Nine is the room with nothing frightening in it, from around seven. For a party with older kids in it, run Strangest Thing alongside for the ones who want something eerie and harder. Glenferrie Road has everything you need afterwards without moving the car, which is why this venue takes a lot of parties. See the kids birthday page.

Corporate and team building. Strangest Thing is the strongest work booking here: the hardest room in the building, no horror content, and an escalation curve that rewards progress rather than punishing failure, which suits a group who do not all know each other. The Nine-Nine if you want it lighter and more competitive. Formats and rates are on the team building page.

Hens, bucks and milestones. A group with mixed appetite splits neatly here, one room terrifying and two not. See hens, bucks and milestone celebrations.

Schools. Three rooms takes a class in waves, and Hawthorn is convenient for the inner east and eastern school corridor. Pricing, formats and compliance paperwork are on the school excursions page.

Buying for somebody else? A gift voucher lets them pick their own room, which is safer than guessing whether they want to be frightened.

Accessibility, and what to tell us

Tell us at check-in, or before you book if it will affect which room you choose. We can brief a player on what is coming, keep the lights higher, drop the volume, or have your games master stay in closer contact through the game. It costs nothing to ask.

One thing to know about HackSaw specifically. It uses tight spaces and restraint is part of the experience. If anyone in the group is genuinely claustrophobic, that is the room to avoid, and Strangest Thing or The Conjoining at St Kilda are better if you still want atmosphere or fear.

Nothing depends on English fluency. Puzzles are built on symbols, patterns, objects, numbers and physical logic rather than reading and wordplay, in all sixteen rooms.

No live actors, anywhere. Not in one of our rooms, at any venue, in any season including Halloween. Nothing chases you, nothing touches you, and you are never locked in. The door is unlocked in every room and you can step out at any second.

Companion Card holders play free, and we have adapted rooms for Deaf and Auslan groups, blind and low vision players and players with intellectual disabilities since 2016. Call 03 8590 9729 or email hawthorn@rushescapegame.com.au and we will tell you honestly what a specific room is like.

Where we draw from

Rush Hawthorn is at 606 Glenferrie Road, in the middle of the Glenferrie shopping and dining strip and a short walk from Glenferrie Station.

Most of our bookings here come from Hawthorn, Kew, Camberwell, Canterbury, Balwyn, Surrey Hills, Glen Iris, Malvern, Richmond, Abbotsford, Burwood, Box Hill, Blackburn, Doncaster, Ivanhoe and the inner and middle east, plus students from the Glenferrie campus precinct.

It is one stop of thought from the city on the Lilydale and Belgrave lines, and if you are coming from elsewhere, South Yarra is closer to the CBD, St Kilda serves the bayside, and Chadstone has parking on site for the south east.

Questions about this venue