What a marathon actually involves
Two, three, four or all six rooms at one venue, back to back, in a single visit. Same rooms, same hour each, no shortcuts. What changes is what happens to your brain by the third one.
The first room is the one you play well. You are fresh, the group is talking, everybody is looking properly. By the third, people have stopped checking each other's work and started trusting a wrong answer because somebody said it confidently. That is the actual test, and it is why a marathon is a completely different achievement from playing six rooms across six months.
Sessions are spaced so there is a gap between rooms for the reset and a breather. A three-room run is most of an afternoon. A full six-room run at South Yarra is a whole day, and you will want to build food into the middle of it rather than powering through.
Hardcore Mode
No hints. No calculators. No torches.
Those three removals are more brutal than they read, and each one takes away a different crutch.
No hints means the games master stops being a safety net. In a normal game a well-timed nudge keeps the pace up when a group stalls. Without it, a stall is yours to solve or yours to lose, and the psychological effect of knowing nobody is coming is bigger than the practical one.
No calculators sounds trivial until you are doing arithmetic under time pressure with five people shouting numbers. Mental maths is the first thing that falls over when you are stressed.
No torches is the one that hurts in our darker rooms. You search the way the room intends rather than the way that is convenient.
Hardcore Mode can be applied to a single room or to an entire marathon. Doing a full marathon in Hardcore is the hardest thing available at Rush and very few groups finish clean.
Suggested running orders
Order matters more than people expect. Two principles: do the hardest puzzles while your brain is fresh, and finish on the scariest room, because being frightened wrecks your concentration for whatever comes next and you want that at the end rather than the middle.
South Yarra, the full six
The only six-room run in the network. A whole day.- Monsterz, 3 out of 5. The warm-up.
- Cluemanji, 3 out of 5. Still finding your rhythm.
- Game of the Dragon, 4 out of 5. First real test.
- Secret Agent Man, 4 out of 5. Break for food before this one.
- HackSaw: Chapter 2, 4 out of 5, Intense. Pressure arrives.
- It's Nightmare, 4 out of 5, Terrifying. Finish here.
Six rooms, one building, and a genuine day out. South Yarra times
St Kilda, the four-room escalation
The cleanest ladder we have. Not scary to Terrifying in four steps.- Treasure Island, 3 out of 5, Not scary.
- Alice in Wonderland, 3 out of 5, Spooky.
- The Last of Them, 4 out of 5, Intense.
- The Conjoining, 4 out of 5, Terrifying.
If you only ever do one marathon, do this one. Every tier of the scare scale in order, in one building. St Kilda times
Hawthorn, three rooms, three registers
Comedy to eerie to genuinely frightening.- The Nine-Nine, 3 out of 5, Not scary.
- Strangest Thing, 4 out of 5, Spooky. Hardest room here.
- HackSaw, 3 out of 5, Terrifying. The original.
Note the shape: the scary room is the easiest and the family room is the hardest. Finishing on HackSaw is the right call anyway. Hawthorn times
Chadstone, the hardest run in the network
Two rooms at five out of five. Groups of two to four only.- Da Vinci Down Under, 5 out of 5. Fresh brain required.
- Mission:Possible, 5 out of 5. Still fresh, hopefully.
- HackSaw: Remastered, 4 out of 5, Terrifying.
Important: Da Vinci and Mission:Possible both cap at four players, so a Chadstone marathon is limited to groups of two to four. Most groups do not escape both fives. Chadstone times
The full sixteen
Sixteen rooms across four venues is the largest single body of escape room work in Melbourne, and a handful of people have worked through all of it. There is no formal challenge, no card to stamp and no prize. There is just the fact that almost nobody has done it, and the four-venue split means it cannot be knocked over in a weekend.
If you are working through it, the order that makes sense is by venue rather than by theme, because the travel is the constraint. Our full room list by occasion and difficulty is the place to plan from.
Who this is for
Book a marathon if: you have played several escape rooms and keep escaping with time to spare, you have a group who will actually stay for the whole thing, or you want a birthday or a stag or hen day that is an event rather than an hour.
Do not book one if: anybody in the group is new to escape rooms, or the group is only loosely committed. Three rooms with somebody who wants to leave after the first is worse than one room done well.
Four to six players is the right size for a marathon. Two people can do it and it is genuinely gruelling by the third room. Groups larger than six should split across rooms and race instead, which is a different and also very good day.
Questions
How long does a marathon take?
Roughly plan on two hours per room including the gap between sessions, so a three-room run is most of an afternoon and a six-room run is a full day. We will send exact times when we build your schedule.
Do we get a break?
Yes, there is a gap between rooms, and for anything over three rooms we would build a proper food break in. Every venue has somewhere to eat within a short walk.
Can we do a marathon across different venues?
Yes, though the travel makes it a longer day than it sounds. Most groups do a single-venue run and come back for the next venue another time.
Is Hardcore Mode available on any room?
Yes, on a single room or across a whole marathon. Tell us when you enquire.
What happens if we do not escape a room?
You move on to the next one. Your games master will walk you through what you missed, which for a marathon group is usually the most useful part of the day, because the same blind spot tends to show up again in room three.
How do we book one?
Enquire rather than booking online, because we build the schedule around your group and the rooms you want. Email enquiries@rushescapegame.com.au with your venue, number of rooms, group size and preferred date.
Enquire about a marathon See the scare scale
Planning a run of several rooms means choosing which ones. These groupings are the fastest way to build an order that does not repeat itself.