Game of the Dragon, Fantasy Escape Room in South Yarra
Fantasy • South Yarra, Melbourne • 60 minutes • 2 to 6 players
The story
You have been enlisted by the King to retrieve the Flame of the Dragon, stolen by the Maesters of Southteros. He has called them to his castle to buy you time. Infiltrate the Maesters' Hall of Knowledge, find the secret apothecary where the Flame is hidden, and bring it back. Fail, and the King will have your head.
At a glance
Suitable for: All ages. An epic fantasy adventure with no scares, great for families and teams. Under-16s welcome with a participating adult.
An epic fantasy quest, all adventure and intrigue with no scares, no gore and nothing that chases you. Genuinely all-ages, and a favourite for families, larger teams and corporate groups.
Pricing: $74 per person for 2 players, scaling down to $70 per person for 6. Children aged 9 to 13 are $42 each, with at least one paying adult per room.
Book Game of the Dragon at South Yarra
Not ready to lock in the whole group?
Hold your preferred time with a single-player booking ($100 a room), which secures the room while you round up your team. Everyone else pays the difference when you arrive. Booking is instant, and you can reschedule for free up to 2 hours before your start time.
Is this theme right for you?
Game of the Dragon is an epic fantasy quest: the King has sent you to infiltrate the Maesters' castle in Southteros and steal back the Flame of the Dragon before he has your head. If you loved Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, the warring houses, dragons, castles and court intrigue, or the sword-and-sorcery of Merlin, this room was built for you. It captures the epic fantasy world and the thrill of a daring heist without any of the gore, so it plays as an adventure the whole family and team can enjoy. Fans of the genre will love the setting, and you do not need to know any of it to have a great time.
Why book with Rush
- Melbourne owned and operated. More than a decade building Melbourne's highest-rated escape rooms, every room designed, built and run in-house.
- A 4.9 star experience. Rated by thousands of players across our venues.
- Bespoke, never off the shelf. Every room is designed and built by our own team, not bought as a kit.
- Handmade and authentic. We work with local artists and restore vintage set pieces, so every room feels real and fully immersive.
- Always being upgraded. Our in-house team is constantly refining the tech, puzzles and sets, so the rooms stay cutting edge.
- Our delight guarantee. If your experience falls short, tell us and we will make it right.
Planning a birthday or corporate event?
Game of the Dragon is a favourite for corporate groups and team outings. Each room holds up to 6, so larger groups split across rooms at South Yarra and play at the same time. For corporate team-building and group functions, see our team-building page or email enquiries@rushescapegame.com.au. For birthdays, parties, and hens or bucks nights, see our celebrations page. To hold a date, book a single player as a deposit.
Good to know before you go
- No experience or special equipment needed, just your group.
- Wear comfortable clothing and closed-in shoes.
- Arrive 10 minutes before your start time.
- Players under 16 are welcome with a participating adult in the room.
- You are never locked in and can step out at any time.
Escape rooms in South Yarra
Game of the Dragon is one of six escape rooms at our South Yarra flagship, our largest venue, a two-minute walk from South Yarra Station. It is one of the best fantasy and family escape rooms in Melbourne and a favourite for corporate teams. Alongside it at South Yarra are It's Nightmare, HackSaw: Chapter 2, Secret Agent Man, Monsterz and Cluemanji, so a group can pick anything from horror to family. Easy to reach from the Melbourne CBD, Toorak, Prahran, Windsor and the inner south.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Game of the Dragon based on Game of Thrones?
- It is our own original epic-fantasy quest, made for fans of that world. If you loved Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon or Merlin, the warring houses, dragons and castle intrigue, you will feel right at home. It is an all-ages adventure with none of the gore, and you do not need to know the shows to enjoy it.
- What is Game of the Dragon like?
- It is a fantasy quest to infiltrate a castle and retrieve the stolen Flame of the Dragon, all adventure and puzzle-solving rather than scares.
- Is it physical? Do we need to be fit?
- No. The challenge is mental, not physical. You will not need strength or fitness to play, just teamwork and a bit of lateral thinking.
- How hard is it? Is it good for beginners?
- It is a solid challenge. No experience is needed and your games master gives hints, so first-timers do well.
- Is it suitable for kids?
- Yes, it suits all ages with no scares. Under-16s are welcome with a participating adult in the room.
- What is the best group size?
- It plays with 2 to 6. We find 3 to 4 hits the sweet spot, and larger groups split across rooms at South Yarra to compete head to head.
- Is it good for team-building?
- Yes, it is a favourite for corporate groups and team outings. See our team-building page or email enquiries@rushescapegame.com.au for group bookings or tailored pricing.
Getting here & what's nearby
160 Toorak Road, South Yarra VIC 3141. Please enter via 147 Osborne Street.
Metres from South Yarra Station, with trams running along Toorak Road and Chapel Street.
Get directions → •
Parking nearby → •
Restaurants & bars nearby →
Chapel Street and Toorak Road are on the doorstep for food and drinks before or after your game. Questions? Email southyarra@rushescapegame.com.au or call 03 9972 8021.
More rooms at South Yarra
Other Rush venues across Melbourne
St Kilda: Alice in Wonderland, The Conjoining, Treasure Island, The Last of Them | Book St Kilda
Chadstone: HackSaw: Remastered, Mission:Possible, Da Vinci Down Under | Book Chadstone
What is a fantasy escape room, and is Game of the Dragon hard?
Four out of five, so yes, and it is the hardest room at South Yarra alongside three others at the same rating. It is also rated Not scary and suitable for all ages, which makes it the most demanding room in the network that a family can play together.
A fantasy escape room is one where the puzzles are allowed to be magic. That sounds trivial and it is actually the whole design advantage. A modern-day room has to justify why a locked box is in an office. A fantasy room does not: a sealed vault, a rune that responds to the right object, a mechanism nobody has opened for a hundred years, all of it is simply how the world works. That licence lets a fantasy room be denser and stranger than a realistic one without ever feeling contrived.
The premise here is court politics with a dragon at the end of it. The King has sent you into the Maesters' castle in Southteros to steal back the Flame of the Dragon, and he will have your head if you fail. Warring houses, a castle, a claim, and something enormous with a hoard.
High fantasy and sword and sorcery are different genres
Worth knowing, because they promise different hours and most people use the words interchangeably.
Sword and sorcery is small in scale and personal in stakes. A mercenary, a thief, a tomb, a cursed object, a monster, a payday. The fate of the world is not at issue and nobody is anybody's rightful heir. It is pulpy, fast and physical.
High fantasy is the opposite: a fully realised secondary world with its own history, geography, houses, bloodlines and prophecy, where the stakes are dynastic or civilisational and the plot turns on succession, legitimacy and betrayal as much as on swordplay. It is the tradition of the invented map at the front of the book.
Game of the Dragon sits in the second one and borrows the best thing about it: a world with rules and a history you are expected to learn. Maesters keep records. Houses have sigils and grievances. A claim can be legitimate or convenient and the difference matters to everyone except the dragon. That is a set of interlocking systems, which is another way of saying it is a set of puzzles.
What the room draws on
The dragon, which is older than any of it
Every fantasy dragon in modern fiction is a descendant of a very specific and very old idea, and it is worth knowing where the furniture came from.
In Beowulf, a thousand years ago, the last act is a dragon woken by a thief who steals a single cup from its barrow hoard. It is already the complete package: the sleeping wyrm, the hoard of gold, the theft, the disproportionate fury and the dying king. The Norse tradition gives us Fáfnir, who was a person before greed turned him into a dragon coiled around his gold, which is a better piece of writing about avarice than most things published since. Medieval bestiaries catalogued dragons alongside real animals, with habits and weaknesses, as though a naturalist might one day get a good look at one. St George gives us the dragon as a thing to be killed by a hero. The red dragon of Wales gives us the dragon as a nation's emblem.
Then there is the entirely separate tradition of the East, where the dragon is a benevolent bringer of rain and rivers, associated with water rather than fire and with wisdom rather than greed. Two continents looked at the same imaginary animal and reached opposite conclusions about its character.
What every version shares is the hoard. A dragon is a creature defined by guarding something, and a guarded treasure is the oldest puzzle premise in existence. That is why this room works.
The castle and the claim
The second strand is political. Court intrigue supplies everything a room designer wants: a locked archive, a maester's records, a sigil that identifies a house, a seal that proves authority, a letter that should have been burnt, a line of succession with an inconvenient branch, a prophecy that can be read two ways, and a heir with a claim that is either legitimate or a very good forgery.
All of it is information under control, which is the same thing as a puzzle. In a horror room the antagonist wants to hurt you. In a court, the antagonist wants you not to know something, and the whole hour is about finding out anyway.
The quest
The third strand is the simplest and it carries the pace. Go there, take the thing, come back before something terrible happens. The quest structure gives a group an unambiguous goal from the first minute, and every fantasy trope stacked around it, the castle, the vault, the enchantment, the flame, is really a variation on the guarded object.
If you loved Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, the warring houses, dragons, castles and court intrigue, or the sword-and-sorcery of Merlin, this room was built for you. It is our own original story set in our own world, not an adaptation of anything.
How we rate scare, and why it is not difficulty
Two independent scales, because they measure different things. Difficulty is the puzzles, one to five stars. Scare is the experience, four named tiers.
Game of the Dragon is Not scary on the scare scale and four out of five on difficulty. That combination makes it unusual in the network. It is one of the six hardest rooms we run and the only one of them with no horror content and no age restriction, which is why it is the room we point ambitious families and mixed-age groups at when they want to be properly challenged.
Who this room is for, and who it is not
Book it if: you want a hard room with no horror, you have a mixed-age group who all want a real challenge, you love fantasy, dragons and court intrigue, or you are a group of adults who want something ambitious without booking a scare.
Pick something else if: it is a first escape room for a group with young children, or you want an easy hour.
Age. All ages with an adult in the room. Four out of five is demanding, so younger children will need the adults working. If you want the same fantasy-adventure feel with easier puzzles, Cluemanji at the same venue is three out of five and built for families.
Nothing frightening. No horror content, no darkness used to unsettle anyone, nothing jumps out. There are no live actors in this or any of our sixteen rooms, at any venue, in any season.
Claustrophobia. You are never locked in and the exit is always available. The room is not built around confinement.
Language. The puzzles are deliberately designed not to depend on English fluency. Almost everything is solved through symbols, patterns, objects, numbers and physical logic rather than reading and wordplay, across all sixteen rooms. In a room full of runes and sigils that principle does real work.
Groups and parties. Two to six players. South Yarra is our flagship with six rooms, so a large group splits across several and plays at the same time. This is a good pick for a teenage birthday where the group wants to be challenged rather than scared.
Questions people ask before booking
Is it scary?
No. Not scary is our lowest tier. There is a dragon in the story and nothing in the room designed to frighten anyone.
Can kids play it?
Yes, with an adult. It is all ages by content and four out of five by difficulty, so expect the adults to carry some of the load. Younger groups usually do better in Cluemanji.
Is it the hardest room at South Yarra?
Equal hardest, at four out of five, alongside Secret Agent Man, It's Nightmare and HackSaw: Chapter 2. Our five out of five rooms are both at Chadstone.
Do we need to have watched anything?
No. The room briefs you on its world and nothing requires outside knowledge. Liking the genre makes it more fun and gives no advantage.
Is there an actual dragon?
There is a castle, a hoard, a flame worth stealing and a king who wants it back. We will let the room answer the rest.
Is it good for a work group?
Yes, particularly for a group who want a challenge without a horror theme. Secret Agent Man is the other strong corporate room at this venue.
Where it sits in the network
Six rooms at South Yarra, our flagship, spanning every tier deliberately so a large group can split and nobody gets an hour they did not want.
| Room | Scare | Difficulty | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Game of the Dragon | Not scary | 4 / 5 | High fantasy. Houses, a castle, a claim and a hoard. Hard, and all ages. |
| Secret Agent Man | Not scary | 4 / 5 | Espionage thriller. A device, a clock and no back-up. |
| It's Nightmare | Terrifying | 4 / 5 | Psychological horror. The scariest room at South Yarra. |
| HackSaw: Chapter 2 | Intense | 4 / 5 | Trap thriller. Pressure and a burning clock, no gore. |
| Cluemanji | Not scary | 3 / 5 | Board-game jungle adventure. The family pick here. |
| Monsterz | Not scary | 3 / 5 | Friendly monster world. The youngest-friendly room at this venue. |
If you want harder still, Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible at Chadstone are both five out of five, and both cap at four players.
Finding us in South Yarra
Game of the Dragon is one of six escape rooms at Rush South Yarra, our flagship at 160 Toorak Road, entered via 147 Osborne Street, two minutes from South Yarra Station. Easy from Prahran, Windsor, Toorak, Richmond, Armadale, Albert Park, Port Melbourne, St Kilda and the Melbourne CBD.
Six rooms under one roof is why this venue takes the biggest groups. A family or a work group can run several rooms at once and compare times afterwards, which is far more fun than it has any right to be.
Sessions run seven days. Two to six players, sixty minutes, instant confirmation and free rescheduling up to two hours before your start time.