The scariest escape rooms in Melbourne
The honest answer is that "scariest" is four different questions, and the person asking usually only cares about one of them. Scariest to look at, scariest to be inside, scariest if you are claustrophobic, and scariest if you do not believe in ghosts are four different rooms.
So rather than hand you a ranking and hope, this page compares our four scariest rooms head to head on the things that actually decide it. We run those four at our Terrifying tier, the top of our scare scale, and there is one at each of our four Melbourne venues.
If you want the short version: HackSaw: Remastered at Chadstone is the most relentless hour we run, and The Conjoining at St Kilda is the one that follows people home. Those are different kinds of scary and the rest of this page is about which one is yours.
The four, and what each one does to you
| Room | Venue | Fear type | Gore | Confined | Puzzles | Age |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Conjoining | St Kilda | Supernatural dread | None | No | 4 / 5 | 16+ |
| HackSaw | Hawthorn | Trap, visceral | Yes | Yes | 3 / 5 | 16+ |
| HackSaw: Remastered | Chadstone | Trap, visceral | Yes | Yes, unavoidable | 4 / 5 | 16+ |
| It's Nightmare | South Yarra | Psychological | None | No | 4 / 5 | 15+ |
Read that table sideways and the decision usually makes itself. Two of the four have no blood in them and no confinement, which means somebody who has ruled out horror on either of those grounds still has access to the top tier without compromise. That is unusual, and it is the reason we publish the axes separately rather than a single number.
Head to head
The Conjoining or HackSaw?
The two most people argue about, and they have almost nothing in common. HackSaw is physical: restraint, tight spaces, and a set built to disturb you with what you are looking at. The fear arrives through your body. The Conjoining is atmospheric: darkness, sound, and an hour of being increasingly certain there is something in the room with you. The fear arrives through your imagination, which means it does not stop when you leave.
HackSaw is also a full star easier on puzzles, at three out of five, so you have more capacity left over to be frightened with. The Conjoining is four out of five and asks you to think clearly while working hard to stop you.
Take HackSaw if what scares you is being trapped and what you might see. Take The Conjoining if what scares you is not being alone.
HackSaw or HackSaw: Remastered?
Same premise, rebuilt from the ground up nearly a decade later by a team that had spent that decade learning how to frighten people properly. Remastered is not a remake with a bigger budget, it is the original delivered with precision the first build could not achieve: timing that used to be approximate is exact, cues the games master used to trigger are triggered by the room itself, and effects that were once suggested are now delivered.
It is also a full star harder, at four out of five, and it uses tight spaces that cannot be avoided rather than merely used.
Take the original if it is your first room at the top tier. Take Remastered if you have done the original, or you want the most relentless hour in the network.
The Conjoining or It's Nightmare?
The two with no gore and no confinement, so this comes down to what kind of unreal thing frightens you. The Conjoining is a haunting: something ancient, external, and interested in you, with two investigators who went in first and did not come out. It's Nightmare goes inward instead, at your own subconscious, on the premise that what frightened you at seven still frightens you and has only been filed somewhere you do not look.
Which lands harder is genuinely personal. People who find the supernatural silly are usually more frightened by It's Nightmare, because it does not require you to believe in anything.
Take The Conjoining for a presence in the room. Take It's Nightmare for the thing in the wardrobe.
Are any of them scarier than the Melbourne CBD horror rooms?
Different products. The CBD operators lean gore, jump-scare density and in some cases live performers, which for a lot of people is precisely the point and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If a person in a mask is what makes it scary for you, book one of theirs.
What we build is sustained dread with nobody in the room but your own group, which is a slower and more durable fear and a much harder hour to solve. Time Out's reviewers, when asked which Melbourne escape room is the scariest, point at Rush.
Different question, different answer. Density of shocks, or an hour you keep thinking about.
How we decide a room is Terrifying
The rating is not set by intention. Plenty of rooms are built to be frightening and are not, and a dark poster proves nothing.
A room reaches our top tier when experienced horror players come out saying so, consistently, over time. People who seek this out on purpose and have played a lot of it are the only reliable judges, because a first-timer finds everything intense and a designer is far too close to it.
We also rate it independently of difficulty, and the two genuinely do move apart. HackSaw is our most frightening tier at only three out of five on puzzles, which is why it is the horror room we send first-timers to. Strangest Thing at Hawthorn is two full tiers gentler and a star harder. Anyone who collapses fear and difficulty into one number cannot tell you either of those things.
And ratings move when the evidence says they should. The Conjoining went up on difficulty after it had been running for years, and HackSaw: Remastered came down from five out of five to four, because Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible are genuinely harder and calling Remastered our hardest room was misleading. Publishing a downgrade is the part that makes the rest of the scale worth anything.
Who should not book these
We would rather talk you into the right room than out of a refund, so this section is deliberately blunt.
Do not book the top tier if it is somebody's first escape room and they are nervous, you have a mixed-age group, anyone is pregnant or has a heart condition, or anyone is under 16 (15 for It's Nightmare).
Claustrophobia: avoid all three HackSaw rooms. They use tight spaces by design and Remastered uses spaces that cannot be avoided. The Conjoining and It's Nightmare are dark rather than close, and are at the same tier, so you give up no fear at all.
Gore: avoid HackSaw and HackSaw: Remastered. The other two contain no blood and nothing designed to disgust you.
Want it scary but not that scary? Step down a tier. HackSaw: Chapter 2 and The Last of Them are Intense: real tension, no top-tier fear. Below them, Strangest Thing and Alice in Wonderland are Spooky and suit most ages.
Questions
What is the scariest escape room in Melbourne?
Of ours, HackSaw: Remastered at Chadstone is the most relentless and The Conjoining at St Kilda is the one that stays with people longest. Remastered frightens you harder in the hour. The Conjoining frightens you for longer afterwards.
Are there live actors or does anything chase you?
No, in any of our sixteen rooms, at any venue, in any season including Halloween. Nothing chases you and nothing touches you. Every scare is built into the set, the lighting, the sound and the story.
Can we leave if it is too much?
At any second. You are never locked in, the door stays unlocked, and your games master watches the entire game and can talk to you, pause it or come in within seconds.
Which is the scariest room without gore?
The Conjoining, at the top tier with no blood at all. It's Nightmare sits alongside it, also gore-free and also Terrifying.
Which is the scariest room for someone who is claustrophobic?
The Conjoining or It's Nightmare. Both are top-tier scary and neither is built around confinement. Skip the HackSaw rooms.
Is a scary escape room a good first escape room?
It can be, if the group actually wants it. HackSaw is the one we recommend, because at three out of five the puzzles stay readable while you are frightened. If anyone is unsure, start in the Spooky tier and work up rather than finding out the hard way.
Half our group will not do a scary room.
Book two rooms at the same venue in the same time slot. St Kilda spans all four scare tiers in one building and South Yarra spans every tier across six rooms.
One terrifying room at every venue
| Venue | Terrifying room | Book |
|---|---|---|
| Chadstone, 53 Warrigal Rd, Oakleigh | HackSaw: Remastered, the most relentless | Live times |
| St Kilda, Level 1, 100 Barkly St | The Conjoining, the one that lingers | Live times |
| Hawthorn, 606 Glenferrie Rd | HackSaw, the original and the best first | Live times |
| South Yarra, 160 Toorak Rd | It's Nightmare, no gore, no confinement | Live times |
Sixty minutes, two to six players, seven days a week, instant confirmation and free rescheduling up to two hours before your start time.