HackSaw: Remastered, Horror Escape Room in Chadstone
Horror • Chadstone, Melbourne • 60 minutes • 2 to 6 players
The story
You are probably wondering where you are. I will tell you where you might be: the room that you die in. The furnace is already burning, and you have one hour before this house ignites. You believed you were free from your guilt, your shame, the consequences of your lies. I am always watching. Find redemption, or face true justice.
At a glance
Suitable for: 16 and up. A brutal trap-horror, not designed for younger players; under-16s only at parental discretion with a participating adult. Contains tight spaces.
A brutal, genuinely frightening trap-horror, the remaster of our original HackSaw. Built on darkness, tight spaces and dread. Nothing chases you and nothing makes contact, but it is a real fright.
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 HackSaw: Remastered at Chadstone
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?
HackSaw: Remastered is the remastered original: our very first HackSaw, rebuilt for Chadstone. You wake in a house rigged to burn, a voice offers you redemption if you can earn it, and the clock is ticking. If you loved the Saw films and Jigsaw's twisted games, the grimy traps, the ticking clock and the sense that one wrong move costs you, this room was built for you. It is a brutal, genuinely frightening trap-horror, with every scare from the set, the lighting, the sound and the story rather than a live actor. It suits fans of gory, high-tension horror who want a proper fright and a real challenge.
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?
HackSaw: Remastered is our intense horror room at Chadstone. For younger players or a mixed-age birthday, our non-horror rooms Mission:Possible and Da Vinci Down Under are a gentler option on the scares, though they are our toughest puzzle rooms here. Each room holds up to 6, so larger groups split across rooms at Chadstone 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.
- There are tight spaces in this room that cannot be avoided.
- Arrive 10 minutes before your start time.
- Players under 16 must have a participating adult in the room, and the room is not designed for younger players.
- You are never locked in and can step out at any time.
Escape rooms in Chadstone
HackSaw: Remastered is the remastered original of our HackSaw series, now at Chadstone, joining the original HackSaw in Hawthorn and HackSaw: Chapter 2 in South Yarra. It is one of three escape rooms at our Chadstone venue on Warrigal Road, 150 metres from Oakleigh Station, alongside the puzzle-heavy Mission:Possible and Da Vinci Down Under. If you are after a Saw-style or horror escape room in Melbourne's south-east, Oakleigh, Chadstone, Carnegie or Clayton, this is the one.
Frequently asked questions
- Is HackSaw: Remastered based on Saw?
- It is our own original trap-horror story, and the remastered version of the very first HackSaw. Made for fans of the Saw films and Jigsaw's deadly games, the grimy traps and the race against the clock. Every scare comes from the set and the story, never a live actor.
- Is HackSaw: Remastered actually scary?
- Yes. It is a brutal, trap-filled horror in the spirit of the Saw films and genuinely frightening. The fear comes from the set, the lighting, the sound and the story, not from anything chasing you. See the "how scary is it" scale above.
- Are there live actors, or does anything chase us?
- No. There are no live actors, and nothing chases or follows you. Every scare comes from the set, the lighting, the sound and the story, never from a person in the room with you.
- Will anything touch or grab us?
- No. It is a hands-off experience. Nothing in the room makes contact with you, and you never need to touch anything you would rather not.
- Can we leave if it gets too much?
- Anytime. You are never locked in, the door stays unlocked, and you can step out whenever you like. Your games master watches the whole game and can pause or step in within seconds.
- I get claustrophobic. Will I feel trapped?
- The room does use tight spaces that cannot be avoided, so it can feel close, but you are never locked in and the exit is always available, so you can step out the moment you want to. If you would rather skip the horror, Mission:Possible and Da Vinci Down Under at Chadstone are brighter, all-ages rooms.
- Is it suitable for first-timers?
- Yes, on the puzzle side the difficulty is fair and your games master gives hints whenever you need them. Just know it is genuinely scary, so it suits first-timers who actively want a fright rather than a gentle introduction.
- What is the minimum age?
- Recommended for 16 and up given the intense horror and tight spaces. It is not designed for younger players, and under-16s are only welcome at parental discretion with a participating adult in the room.
- How many players do we need?
- Two to six. Larger groups can split across rooms at Chadstone and race head to head.
Getting here & what's nearby
53 Warrigal Road, Chadstone VIC.
150 metres from Oakleigh Station.
Get directions → •
Parking nearby → •
Restaurants & bars nearby →
Oakleigh's Eaton Mall dining strip and the Chadstone shopping centre are close by for food and drinks. Questions? Email oakleigh@rushescapegame.com.au or call 04 6871 3389.
More rooms at Chadstone
Other Rush venues across Melbourne
Hawthorn: HackSaw, Strangest Thing, The Nine-Nine | Book Hawthorn
St Kilda: Alice in Wonderland, The Conjoining, Treasure Island, The Last of Them | Book St Kilda
What is the difference between HackSaw and HackSaw: Remastered?
Remastered is the original rebuilt from scratch, nearly a decade later, by a team that had spent that decade learning how to frighten people properly. Same premise, same trap horror bones, a harder and more relentless room.
The short version, if you are choosing between them: HackSaw at Hawthorn is the original and rates three out of five on puzzles. Remastered at Chadstone rates four out of five and is the tighter, more punishing build. Both sit at Terrifying, our highest scare tier. If you have done the original and want it turned up, this is that. If you have done neither, either is a legitimate starting point, and Remastered is the harder one.
What happens when you rebuild a horror room ten years on
Remakes are usually a bad idea, and everyone knows why. The original had the ideas. The remake has the budget. Horror is especially unforgiving about it, because the thing that made the original work was almost never the money.
The reason a remaster is different from a remake is that it is not trying to improve the ideas. It is trying to deliver them properly with tools that did not exist the first time. Every design compromise the original made because a mechanism was not affordable, or a cue could not be triggered reliably, or an effect was not stable enough to run eight times a day, is a compromise that no longer applies.
That is the honest description of what Remastered is. The premise, the shape and the dread are the original's. What changed is precision. Timing that used to be approximate is exact. Cues that used to be triggered by a games master watching a monitor are triggered by the room itself, at the moment the room decides. Effects that were once suggested are now delivered. A trap horror lives or dies on whether the mechanism feels real, and ten years of building rooms in house is ten years of learning exactly how to make a mechanism feel real.
The puzzles were rebuilt too, and made harder. The original is deliberately readable, which is why it works as a first horror room. Remastered assumes you have done this before.
Where the fear comes from
There is no live actor in this room, and no live actor in any of our sixteen rooms, at any venue, at any time of year. Nothing chases you. Nothing touches you. Everything frightening in Remastered is built into the room itself.
Trap horror works differently to supernatural horror, and that is worth understanding before you book. A haunting frightens you with something that should not exist, so part of you is always allowed to disbelieve it. A trap frightens you with something entirely possible: a person, a mechanism, a room and a clock. There is nothing to disbelieve, which is why this genre reaches people who shrug at ghosts.
It also gives an escape room the one thing most escape rooms lack, which is consequence. In an ordinary room a wrong answer costs you time. In a trap room, the fiction insists that being wrong matters, and groups behave differently under that pressure. People check each other's work. The countdown stops being a number on a wall and starts feeling like a mechanism winding down. Nothing happens to you, obviously. But an hour is long enough for your body to half believe otherwise.
Remastered is visceral, and deliberately so. Trap horror is body horror underneath, and its central threat is that a body is a fragile machine that can be taken apart. Take that out and the fiction stops meaning anything. If you want a terrifying room with no blood in it, The Conjoining at St Kilda is a supernatural haunting instead.
The room uses tight spaces that cannot be avoided. That is the design and it is also the honest warning. You are restricted, and then you are asked to think. The door itself is never locked, in this or any room we run, and you can step out at any second of the sixty minutes while your games master watches the whole game.
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.
HackSaw: Remastered is Terrifying on the scare scale and four out of five on difficulty. Worth saying plainly, because people assume it: this is not our hardest room. That title belongs to Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible, both five out of five, both in the same building and both with no horror in them at all. Remastered is our hardest horror room alongside The Conjoining, which is a different claim and a more useful one.
Who this room is for, and who it is not
Book it if: you have played horror escape rooms before and want the harder version, you like the Saw and Jigsaw end of the genre, you have already done the Hawthorn original, or you want the most intense hour available in Melbourne's south east.
Pick something else if: gore bothers you, tight spaces bother you, it is a first escape room for anyone nervous, anyone is pregnant or has a heart condition, or you have anyone under sixteen in the group.
Age. Sixteen and over. Not a room for kids and not a room for a mixed-age family group. For an all-ages booking at Chadstone, Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible are the alternatives, and both are harder puzzles with no horror at all.
Confinement. The honest answer rather than the comfortable one. Remastered uses tight spaces that cannot be avoided. If you are genuinely claustrophobic this is the wrong room, and The Conjoining at St Kilda is the better horror choice because it is dark rather than close. You are never locked in here and you can step out whenever you want, but the room is built to feel tight and it will.
Anxiety and sensory sensitivity. Tell us at check-in. We can brief you on what is coming, keep the lights higher, drop the volume, or have your games master stay in closer contact. It costs nothing to ask.
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.
Groups. Two to six players. Chadstone has three rooms, so a larger group can split and play simultaneously, which suits birthdays, bucks and hens nights and work groups.
Questions people ask before booking
Do I need to have played the original HackSaw first?
No. Remastered stands entirely on its own. Playing the Hawthorn original first gives you the comparison, which is genuinely interesting if you like this sort of thing, but it is not required and nothing is lost without it.
Is Remastered scarier than the original?
Both sit at Terrifying, our highest tier. Remastered is more relentless and the puzzles are harder, so it feels heavier over the full hour. The original hits earlier and lets up less predictably.
Is it the same room as HackSaw?
Same premise, rebuilt from the ground up in a different building with different puzzles, different pacing and different technology. If you know the original, you will recognise where you are and still be surprised by most of it.
Are there live actors?
No. Not here and not in any of our sixteen rooms, at any venue, in any season, including Halloween.
Will anything touch or grab us?
No. It is hands-off throughout. Nothing in the room makes contact with you.
Is this the hardest escape room at Rush Chadstone?
No. Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible are both five out of five and are the two hardest rooms we run anywhere. Remastered is four out of five, and it is the hardest of the three HackSaw rooms.
The three HackSaw rooms, and which one you want
The name is shared, the rooms are not. Three venues, three genuinely different hours.
| Room | Venue | Scare | Difficulty | What makes it different |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HackSaw | Hawthorn | Terrifying | 3 / 5 | The original. Most approachable puzzles, full horror intensity. The best first horror room. |
| HackSaw: Remastered | Chadstone | Terrifying | 4 / 5 | The rebuild. Tighter, harder and more relentless, with a decade of technique behind it. |
| HackSaw: Chapter 2 | South Yarra | Intense | 4 / 5 | The sequel. A thriller rather than outright horror, pressure and a burning clock instead of gore. |
Elsewhere in the network, The Conjoining at St Kilda is our supernatural terror with no gore, It's Nightmare at South Yarra runs on nightmare logic and personal fear, and The Last of Them at St Kilda is post-apocalyptic survival horror. See all our horror escape rooms.
Finding us in Chadstone
HackSaw: Remastered is one of three escape rooms at Rush Chadstone, 53 Warrigal Road in Oakleigh, minutes from Chadstone Shopping Centre and a short walk from Oakleigh Station. Easy from Malvern East, Carnegie, Murrumbeena, Hughesdale, Clayton, Mount Waverley, Glen Waverley, Bentleigh and the south east, with parking on site.
It is our newest venue and the most weatherproof night out in the area, which makes it the one that fills up when Melbourne does what Melbourne does. Oakleigh's Eaton Mall is a few minutes away for the debrief, and most groups need one.
Sessions run seven days. Two to six players, sixty minutes, instant confirmation and free rescheduling up to two hours before your start time.