Rooms we rebuilt
Ten of the sixteen rooms you can book with us today are not first versions. They are rebuilds, rebuilds of rebuilds, or rooms that occupy the space and sometimes the bones of something that came before them.
The normal life of an escape room is a few good years followed by a quiet retirement, and there is nothing wrong with that. Bookings soften, the set starts to show its age, the operator takes it out and puts something new in. We have gone a different way with most of ours, stripping a room back and building it again rather than letting it go.
What a rebuild keeps that a new room cannot
A new room starts from zero on the only thing that is genuinely scarce, which is knowing whether it works: where the hour sags, which gate loses groups and whether that is the puzzle's fault or the lighting's, and which clue still reads clearly to a tired group at minute forty. That knowledge takes hundreds of sessions to accumulate and none of it transfers to a different room.
Rebuilding keeps all of it, so the second version can go straight at what was not working instead of discovering a fresh set of problems, which is closer to editing a draft than writing a new one.
Three different things we mean by rebuilt
The remaster
Same room, made again years laterA room that was retired comes back, built from the ground up with a decade of technique behind it. Same story spine, different execution, and usually harder. Three of the sixteen are remasters.
The flip
New room, same spaceA room retires and something entirely different is built into the footprint it leaves behind. The walls stay where they are and everything else changes. Four of the sixteen are flips.
The uplift
Same name, rebuilt underneathThe room keeps its name and its story, and the puzzles, technology and set are replaced to bring it up to what players now expect. Three of the sixteen have been through this, and one of them was rebuilt so thoroughly it is effectively a different room wearing a familiar sign.
The lineages
Australian Puzzle Warrior, then The Matrix, then HackSaw: Chapter 2
The longest chain we have. Australian Puzzle Warrior was nine individual boxes, each one effectively its own escape room, and it was the hardest thing we had ever built. What it was not was immersive, and as the market moved from puzzle-hunting toward story and atmosphere, that became the problem it could not solve.
So it became The Matrix, which took the same space in a far more immersive direction. The Matrix in turn retired, and HackSaw: Chapter 2 was built into the footprint. Three completely different experiences, one space, roughly a decade apart end to end.
Rezident Evil, then The Last of Them
A complete rebuild at St Kilda rather than a refresh. The survival horror idea survived, the room around it did not, and what stands there now shares an appetite with its predecessor rather than a design.
Super Incredible, then Monsterz
Super Incredible retired and the space became Monsterz, which is now the gentlest room in the network and one of the two we would send a family to first. The two rooms have almost nothing in common beyond a floor plan.
Last Knight Rises, then Game of the Dragon
Last Knight Rises came out and Game of the Dragon went into the same South Yarra space, which is where the reclaimed hardwood floor and the trapdoor onto the street both turned up. It is now rated four out of five and carries no fright element at all.
Da Vinci Down Under, Mission:Possible and Lost in Paradise
Three of our earliest rooms, all retired in 2017. Da Vinci Down Under opened in 2014, Mission:Possible and Lost in Paradise in 2015. Two of the three have since come back at Chadstone as remasters, and both are now rated five out of five, which makes them the hardest pair we run.
Lost in Paradise has not returned and is unlikely to. It does hold one distinction nothing else does, which is that the first proposal we ever hosted happened in it.
It's Nightmare, Cluemanji and Secret Agent Man
Three uplifts. It's Nightmare and Cluemanji were both taken through a next-generation rebuild under their existing names, with the puzzles updated and the immersion substantially increased. Secret Agent Man went further again and was rebuilt completely, keeping the name and very little else.
The one comparison you can actually make
Most of the rooms above cannot be played against their predecessors, because the predecessors are gone. HackSaw is the exception, since the original is still running at Hawthorn and the rebuild is open at Chadstone.
HackSaw
Hawthorn. Sixteen and over, difficulty 3 of 5, up to six playersThe original, still in the venue it was built for, and the room that established what our horror tier means. A three for difficulty, which makes it the way into that tier rather than its toughest example, and it is deliberately readable for exactly that reason.
HackSaw: Remastered
Chadstone. Sixteen and over, difficulty 4 of 5, up to six playersThe same room made again with ten years of technique behind it. Anything the first build had to settle for on cost, on reliability, or because an effect would not hold up over eight sessions in a day, no longer had to be settled for. The puzzles were rebuilt as well and deliberately made harder, which is where the extra point of difficulty comes from.
Playing both is a genuinely interesting way to see what a decade of building does to a company. They are at different venues, so it is two trips rather than a marathon. The wider tier sits on horror escape rooms, with every rating published on the scare scale.
What survives a rebuild and what does not
Kept: the story spine, the flow structure where it was working, and the puzzles that groups consistently name as the best moment of the hour.
Replaced: set construction, aged mechanisms, lighting and sound, anything ambiguous under pressure, and any gate that was losing groups for the wrong reason.
Removed: the puzzle everybody was polite about. Every room has one, and a rebuild is the opportunity to be honest about it.
Even the rooms we did not rebuild have changed
A full rebuild is the extreme end of something that goes on quietly the whole time. Six of the sixteen are still first versions, and not one of them is running exactly as it opened.
- Ambiguity is the first thing to go. A clue that reads clearly on paper can be genuinely unclear in low light at minute forty, and that shows up in the hint pattern long before anybody complains about it.
- Mechanisms are strengthened over time. Thousands of people a year handle these things enthusiastically, and anything that wears out comes back sturdier.
- Pacing gets adjusted as evidence arrives. Groups stalling in the same spot repeatedly is a design problem rather than a run of unlucky groups.
- Puzzles occasionally get cut altogether, usually one that was clever rather than good.
None of this gets announced, because a room that quietly improved is not news. It does mean a room you played three years ago is not the room running now, even where the name has not changed.
If you have played here before
You played HackSaw and liked it. Remastered is a different venue, a harder rating and a rebuild rather than a reproduction, so it is not a repeat of your evening.
You played Da Vinci Down Under or Mission:Possible before 2017. Both are back at Chadstone, both rated five out of five, and neither plays the way you remember.
You played anything a few years ago. It has moved on since, though not enough to be worth replaying. The knowing is the part you cannot get back.
You have played most of them. The two hardest sit together at Chadstone and get their own treatment on puzzle rooms.
Questions
Is a remaster just the same room again?
It shares a story spine and nothing else you would notice. Da Vinci Down Under started as a faithful recreation and ended up substantially redesigned, because the original puzzles were both too difficult and not impressive enough against what players expect now.
Why keep the old name?
Because a proportion of our players have been coming since those rooms first ran, and the name means something to them. Everyone else is meeting it for the first time either way.
Do you ever just retire a room?
Yes, and Australian Puzzle Warrior and Lost in Paradise are both gone for good. The judgement is whether the underlying idea still earns the floor space, which is a higher bar than whether the set looks tired.
Can I replay a room I have already done?
You can, and we would usually talk you out of it. Once you know the answers the hour becomes a walkthrough, and there are fifteen others that are not.
How much does a rebuild cost you?
More, over the life of a room, than a lot of operators spend buying a room outright in the first place. How we build an escape room covers the process end to end.
Rebuilds are one part of the range. Here is the rest of it, grouped by setting and by what you want from the hour.