Your first escape room
The two things first-timers worry about are whether they will be clever enough and whether they will be frightened. Neither is the thing that actually decides how the hour goes. What decides it is whether the group talks.
Rooms are not intelligence tests. They are built as several chains of different kinds of thinking running at once, and the person who contributes most is almost never the one who expected to. What loses an hour is six people each sitting on something they never said out loud.
Six rooms rated three out of five
There is no one or two on our scale. A three therefore means a properly built hour that a group pulling in the same direction can finish, not a room with the challenge removed. Five of the six below carry no age restriction and no fright rating at all.
- Cluemanji, South Yarra. A jungle that will not release you until the game is finished. Bright, busy and physical.
- Monsterz, South Yarra. Monsters played for warmth rather than fear, and the gentlest hour in the network.
- The Nine-Nine, Hawthorn. A comic police precinct and a competition the recruits call the Heist.
- Treasure Island, St Kilda. A haunted vessel and whatever is still on board, with more searching and mechanism work than code cracking.
- Alice in Wonderland, St Kilda. Rated spooky rather than scary. Strange, beautiful, and fine for most children.
- HackSaw, Hawthorn. Also a three, and the exception on this list: it is sixteen and over and it is genuinely frightening. On here because if horror is what brought you, this is the right entry point rather than a harder one.
How many of you should come
Four tends to be the sweet spot for a first booking. Enough people to sweep the room, not so many that anyone drifts to the edge.
Two is a slower, closer version of the same hour. A pair drops less information, though covering the room takes them noticeably longer. More on that at escape rooms for two.
Six is loud and fast and somebody usually spectates. If there are more than six of you, take two rooms and race instead. That is covered on head to head.
What actually happens, in order
- Arrive about ten minutes early. Bags and phones go into a locker. Wear closed-in shoes, because there is crouching and occasionally crawling.
- The briefing. A game master explains the premise, the hint system and the two or three rules the room needs. A few minutes, no test at the end.
- The hour. Nothing is bolted shut. The trapping is fiction, and leaving is available to you the whole time.
- The photo. Whether you finished or not. It is the bit people keep.
Allow about ninety minutes on site all up. The full walkthrough is on how escape rooms work.
Four things that will help more than being clever
- Search everything before you solve anything. Most losses are search failures wearing a logic costume. Open, lift, look under and behind, and do it completely.
- Say it out loud, even half-formed. The costliest thing in any room is a fact sitting in one head.
- Put found things in one place. A table, a floor space, anywhere. Groups lose minutes hunting for something they already had.
- Ask for the hint early. There is no penalty, no limit and no score. Stuck for four minutes is fine. Stuck for twelve is a waste of the room you paid for.
You will probably not finish, and that is normal
Plenty of first groups do not get out, and the rooms are designed on that assumption. A room that most people beat with time in hand has no pressure in its final stretch, which is where the best part of the hour lives.
If the clock beats you, your game master walks the group through everything still unsolved, so you leave with the whole picture. The near misses are the ones people retell for years.
First-timer questions
Which room should we actually book?
Any of the first five above, at whichever venue you can reach without stress. Getting there easily affects the night more than the choice of room does.
Is it claustrophobic?
Rooms are furnished spaces rather than boxes, and none of them is locked. If small spaces are a genuine concern, tell us when you book and we will point you at the roomiest ones.
What if we want out early?
Then you come out. It happens occasionally, nobody minds, and no door is locked.
Can children play?
Yes, in the all-ages rooms with an adult playing too. Rooms for kids and families goes into what children are actually good at in there.
We loved it. What next?
Move up to a four out of five rather than sideways to another three. The full ladder is on the scare scale, with difficulty rated separately from fear.
A first room is a starting point rather than a destination. When you want the next one, these are the ways to narrow sixteen down.