The Rush scare scale
Almost every escape room in Melbourne is rated on one number, and that number is doing two jobs badly. We rate every one of our sixteen rooms on two separate scales, because how hard a room is and how frightening it is are completely different things, and confusing them is the most common reason people book the wrong room.
This page explains both scales, what each tier actually means in the room, how we decide a rating, and what we never do to anybody regardless of tier. Every room page on this site links back here.
Two scales, not one
Difficulty is the puzzles. One to five stars. How many layers, how abstract the logic, how much you have to hold in your head at once, how far apart the connected pieces sit.
Scare is the experience. Four named tiers. How dark, how loud, how much dread, how hard your heart works.
These move independently, and that is the whole point. HackSaw at Hawthorn is our most frightening tier and only three out of five on puzzles, which is why it is the horror room we recommend to people who have never done one. Strangest Thing, in the same building, is two tiers gentler and one star harder. Da Vinci Down Under at Chadstone is five out of five and has nothing frightening in it at all.
A single rating cannot express any of that. A "4 out of 5" tells you nothing about whether your mother will enjoy it.
The four scare tiers
Tier 1
Not scary
Adventure, mystery, fantasy or comedy. No horror content of any kind. Darkness is never used to unsettle you, nothing is designed to startle you, and there is nothing in the room a young child would find upsetting. These rooms are bright, and that is deliberate: most escape rooms are dark because darkness hides construction and adds atmosphere cheaply, and a brightly lit room that still feels like somewhere is harder to build.
Suits: every age, first-timers, kids birthdays, family groups, work groups with mixed appetites.
Tier 2
Spooky
Atmospheric and eerie rather than frightening. Low light in places, an unsettling mood, a sense that the world is not quite right. Things are suggested and not delivered. Nothing arrives, nothing jumps out at a child, and the strangeness escalates as you make progress rather than as you run out of time. This is the hardest tier to build, because the middle ground between soft and frightening is narrow and easy to miss in either direction.
Suits: most ages with an adult, confident children from around eight to ten, first-timers who want atmosphere, adults who find tier one too gentle.
Tier 3
Intense
Real tension and sustained pressure. Dark, loud and demanding. You are not being told a spooky story, you are inside something with stakes. The tension does not let up much across the hour and it is designed to make solving harder, which is the point. Not built to make you scream, but you will not be relaxed.
Suits: older teens and adults. Good for work groups who want a genuine test, and for horror-curious players stepping up.
Tier 4
Terrifying
Our highest tier, built to frighten people who seek out horror on purpose. Sustained darkness, sudden moments, and an hour of accumulating dread while you try to think clearly. These rooms are made for experienced players and we would rather talk you out of one than have you spend sixty minutes wishing you had booked something else.
Suits: sixteen and over. Not for mixed-age groups, not for a nervous first-timer, and not for anyone who is pregnant or has a heart condition.
Gore is a third axis, and we rate it separately in words
Two rooms can sit at the same tier and be completely different propositions, so the tier alone is not enough. Our Terrifying rooms split cleanly:
HackSaw and HackSaw: Remastered are trap horror and deliberately visceral. Confinement, restraint and imagery designed to disturb. If blood is your limit, these are not your rooms.
The Conjoining and It's Nightmare are supernatural and psychological, with no gore at all. Darkness, sound, dread and a sense of presence. If you want to be genuinely frightened without looking at anything you would rather not, these are the two.
That distinction matters more to most people than the tier does, so every horror room page states it plainly rather than leaving you to guess from a poster.
What we never do, at any tier
No live actors. Not in one of our sixteen rooms, at any venue, in any season, including Halloween. Every scare comes from the set, the lighting, the sound and the story.
Nothing chases you and nothing touches you. Every room is hands-off. Nothing in the room makes contact with you and you never have to touch anything you would rather not.
You are never locked in. The door is unlocked in every room we run. You can step out at any second of the hour. Your games master watches the entire game and can talk to you, pause it or come in within seconds.
Nothing depends on English fluency. Puzzles are built on symbols, patterns, objects, numbers and physical logic rather than reading and wordplay, so a group with mixed English plays on equal footing.
The exit rule is worth dwelling on, because it is the single most common reason people talk themselves out of a horror room. The fiction says you are trapped. You are not. It is a room in a building with a door and a person watching who has done this thousands of times.
How a room gets its rating
Ratings are set by the people who built the room and then tested against real groups, and they move when the evidence says they should. Two of our current ratings changed after the rooms had been running for years: The Conjoining went up on difficulty, and HackSaw: Remastered came down from five out of five to four, because Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible are genuinely harder and it was misleading to call Remastered our hardest room.
A five out of five means more layers than the hour comfortably holds, and the real possibility that a good group does everything right and still loses. We only rate two rooms there. A three means a real puzzle that a first group can beat with a games master's help, which is why three is the right rating for a first escape room rather than a consolation prize.
On the scare side, the test is not what we intended. It is what happens. A room is Terrifying if experienced horror players come out saying so, not because it has a dark poster.
All sixteen rooms, both scales
| Room | Venue | Scare | Difficulty | Players | Age |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Conjoining | St Kilda | Terrifying | 4 / 5 | 2 to 6 | 16+ |
| It's Nightmare | South Yarra | Terrifying | 4 / 5 | 2 to 6 | 15+ |
| HackSaw | Hawthorn | Terrifying | 3 / 5 | 2 to 6 | 16+ |
| HackSaw: Remastered | Chadstone | Terrifying | 4 / 5 | 2 to 6 | 16+ |
| HackSaw: Chapter 2 | South Yarra | Intense | 4 / 5 | 2 to 6 | Teens+ |
| The Last of Them | St Kilda | Intense | 4 / 5 | 2 to 6 | Teens+ |
| Strangest Thing | Hawthorn | Spooky | 4 / 5 | 2 to 6 | All ages |
| Alice in Wonderland | St Kilda | Spooky | 3 / 5 | 2 to 6 | All ages |
| Da Vinci Down Under | Chadstone | Not scary | 5 / 5 | 2 to 4 | All ages |
| Mission:Possible | Chadstone | Not scary | 5 / 5 | 2 to 4 | All ages |
| Secret Agent Man | South Yarra | Not scary | 4 / 5 | 2 to 6 | Teens+ |
| Game of the Dragon | South Yarra | Not scary | 4 / 5 | 2 to 6 | All ages |
| Cluemanji | South Yarra | Not scary | 3 / 5 | 2 to 6 | All ages |
| Monsterz | South Yarra | Not scary | 3 / 5 | 2 to 6 | All ages |
| The Nine-Nine | Hawthorn | Not scary | 3 / 5 | 2 to 6 | All ages |
| Treasure Island | St Kilda | Not scary | 3 / 5 | 2 to 6 | All ages |
Picking the right room for your group
It is our first escape room.
Tier one or two, three out of five. Cluemanji, Treasure Island or The Nine-Nine. Enough to feel like an achievement, not enough to grind.
We have children with us.
Tier one. Monsterz is the gentlest room we run, from around five or six. Cluemanji and Treasure Island from around six or seven, The Nine-Nine from around seven.
Half the group wants horror and half does not.
Book two rooms in the same time slot at the same venue and play simultaneously. St Kilda and South Yarra both span every tier in one building, which is exactly what they are built for.
We want to be genuinely frightened.
Tier four. Then choose on gore: HackSaw or HackSaw: Remastered if you want visceral and confined, The Conjoining or It's Nightmare if you want supernatural with no blood.
We want to be beaten by the puzzles.
Five out of five, both at Chadstone: Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible. Both cap at four players, because a room this dense only works when nobody is idle.
It is a work group.
Secret Agent Man first. Tier one, four out of five, and the mission structure exposes how a team communicates without anybody having to opt out on nerves. The Nine-Nine if you want it lighter, The Last of Them if you want it tense.
Someone is claustrophobic.
Avoid the three HackSaw rooms, which use tight spaces deliberately. Everything else is dark or bright rather than confined, and in every room the exit is always available.
Tell us and we will adjust it
The scale is a guide, not a wall. If somebody in your group is anxious, sensitive to sound or light, autistic, claustrophobic, or simply unsure, 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 through the game. We do this regularly and it costs nothing to ask.
We have adapted rooms for Deaf and Auslan groups, for blind and low vision players and for players with intellectual disabilities since 2016, and we honour the Companion Card. Ask us before you book if you want to know what a specific room would be like, and we will tell you honestly, including when the answer is that a different room would be better.