Strangest Thing, Sci-Fi Escape Room in Hawthorn
Sci-Fi • Hawthorn, Melbourne • 60 minutes • 2 to 6 players
The story
The monster is coming. It took your friend, and now it is after you. To save your town you have to hunt it down and stop it crossing through the Inside-Out. This is no ordinary escape room: it is a race against time, against fear, and against forces beyond your understanding. You have 60 minutes to solve the mystery and close the rift before it spreads.
At a glance
Suitable for: Great for most ages with a participating adult. The puzzle challenge is best enjoyed by teens and adults.
Eerie 80s atmosphere and suspense. No gore, no jump scares chasing you, and nothing ever makes contact. Difficulty and scariness are separate here: the puzzles are a real challenge, but the room stays on the spooky end.
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 Strangest Thing at Hawthorn
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?
Strangest Thing is an 80s sci-fi monster hunt: a small town, a missing friend, a creature crossing over from another dimension, and a group of you racing to close the rift before it spreads. If you loved Stranger Things, the Hawkins-style small-town mystery, the Upside-Down, kids against something from another world, this room was built for you. It leans eerie and nostalgic rather than gory, so it is a great pick for fans of the show who want the tension and the world without full horror. The puzzles reward teamwork, curiosity and noticing detail rather than nerve, which is why it plays well across a wide range of ages and for first-timers.
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?
Strangest Thing suits most groups. For a mixed-age birthday, our all-ages room at Hawthorn, The Nine-Nine, is a lighter option. Each room holds up to 6, so larger groups split across rooms at Hawthorn 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.
- Arrive 10 minutes before your start time.
- Players under 16 are welcome with a participating adult in the room.
- You are never locked in and can step out at any time.
Escape rooms in Hawthorn
Rush Hawthorn is on Glenferrie Road, 150 metres from Glenferrie Station with Tram 16 stopping at the door. Strangest Thing is one of three escape rooms at the venue, alongside HackSaw and The Nine-Nine, so it is an easy pick for an escape room in Hawthorn, Kew, Camberwell or the eastern suburbs, and one of the highest-rated sci-fi escape rooms in Melbourne.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Strangest Thing based on Stranger Things?
- It is our own original 80s sci-fi monster-hunt story, made for fans of that world. If you enjoyed Stranger Things, the small-town mystery, the Upside-Down and a group of friends up against something from another dimension, you will feel right at home. The atmosphere is eerie and nostalgic rather than gory.
- Is Strangest Thing actually scary?
- It is more spooky and suspenseful than outright terrifying, tension and an eerie atmosphere rather than gore or constant scares. 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 effect 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.
- Is it a good escape room for beginners?
- Yes. It is a solid challenge, but no experience is needed and your games master gives hints to keep every team moving. It is one of our most popular rooms for first-timers in Hawthorn.
- What is the minimum age?
- Great for most ages with a participating adult in the room. The puzzle difficulty is best enjoyed by teens and adults. Under-16s must have a participating adult with them.
- How many players do we need?
- Two to six. Larger groups can split across rooms at Hawthorn and race head to head.
Getting here & what's nearby
606 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn VIC 3122. We are on the corner of Glenferrie and Oxley.
150 metres from Glenferrie Station, with Tram 16 stopping at our door (Stop 72). There is free two-hour parking just off Oxley Road.
Get directions → •
Parking nearby → •
Restaurants & bars nearby →
Glenferrie Road cafes and restaurants are right nearby. Questions? Email hawthorn@rushescapegame.com.au or call 03 8590 9729.
More rooms at Hawthorn
Other Rush venues across Melbourne
St Kilda: Alice in Wonderland, The Conjoining, Treasure Island,
A hole opens between here and somewhere else, something comes through, and the closing has a deadline. That story shape runs a long way back and it justifies two spaces inside one room without a wall moving. More on it at sci-fi escape rooms in Melbourne.
How scary is Strangest Thing, and can kids play it?
Spooky, not scary, and yes. It is an eighties sci-fi monster hunt built to be eerie rather than frightening, and it is one of the few rooms anywhere that a twelve year old and a group of adults can play together without one of them having a bad time.
It is also, quietly, the hardest room at our Hawthorn venue. Four out of five on puzzles, harder than HackSaw next door, which surprises people who assume the scary room must be the difficult one. Fear and difficulty are separate things and we rate them separately, which is exactly why this room ends up being the one experienced players enjoy most while their younger cousin is having the best hour of their week.
To be specific about the eerie: there is no gore, nothing chases you, nothing touches you, and there are no live actors in this or any of our sixteen rooms. What there is instead is a small town at night, a friend who has not come home, and something on the other side of a rift that should not be able to reach through it.
The hardest thing to build is a room that is spooky and not scary
Most escape room companies have a horror room and a family room and nothing in between, and there is a reason for that. The middle is genuinely difficult to build. Go too soft and the monster is a costume, the tension evaporates and the adults spend the hour being polite. Go too hard and you have frightened a child in the dark, which is not something you can undo with a good debrief.
The tools that get you into that middle are all about suggestion rather than delivery. Something is heard and not seen. A light behaves in a way that is not quite right. The room implies that a space continues past the wall you are standing at. Nothing arrives. Nothing needs to. A ten year old finds that thrilling, because thrilling and frightening feel almost identical at that age and the difference is entirely whether it resolves badly. An adult finds it unsettling, because they know how these stories usually go and are waiting for it to.
The other half is pace. Horror rooms punish. This room rewards. The strange things escalate as you make progress, so the eeriest moments arrive because you are winning, not because you are running out of time. That is the inversion that keeps it enjoyable for a mixed group, and it is why the room can be genuinely hard without being stressful.
What eighties sci-fi horror draws on
The kids and the town
There is a whole tradition built on one setup: an ordinary suburban town, a group of kids with bikes and walkie-talkies, and a mystery the adults are either ignoring or actively covering up. It works because it inverts the usual power structure. The children are the only ones taking it seriously, so they are the only ones who can solve it, and every adult who dismisses them makes the problem worse.
That is why it makes such good escape room material. The premise already assumes a small group with no authority, limited equipment and an hour of nerve, which is a precise description of six people who have just walked into a locked room.
The laboratory and the cover-up
The second strand is Cold War paranoia, and it is the one that gives the genre its texture. A classified facility on the edge of town. An experiment that was never approved. Sealed doors, containment protocols, warning signage, a project name that means nothing to anyone outside the programme, and files marked in a way that tells you somebody expected them to be read eventually.
Government-experiment fiction supplies the props and the puzzles at once, because the whole aesthetic is about restricted information. A conspiracy is a puzzle by definition. Somebody knows, somebody wrote it down, and somebody hid the document. The eighties setting matters here too: this is analogue paranoia, the era of paper files, magnetic tape, dot matrix printouts, radios and things that had to be physically unlocked. All of which are far better in a room than a password field.
The rift, and what comes through it
The third strand is portal fiction, and underneath it cosmic horror, which is the oldest idea here. The premise is that reality has a seam in it, and something on the other side has noticed us. What makes it frightening is not the creature. It is the implication: if a thing can cross over, then the rules you have been relying on all your life were only ever local.
Strangest Thing is built from all three. A small town, a missing friend, a rift and a creature that came through it, and a group of you trying to close it before it spreads. It is our own original story. If your reference points are eighties monster fiction, small-town anomalies, secret laboratories or another dimension bleeding into this one, you are in the right room, and you can bring your kids.
How we rate scare, and why it is not difficulty
Two independent scales, because they measure different things and confusing them is exactly how people end up in the wrong room. Difficulty is the puzzles, one to five stars. Scare is the experience, four named tiers.
Strangest Thing is Spooky on the scare scale and four out of five on difficulty. That combination is rare and it is the whole appeal. It is the hardest room at Hawthorn and the second easiest to bring a family to, which no other room in the venue manages. If you want the same eerie register with easier puzzles, Alice in Wonderland at St Kilda is Spooky at three out of five.
Who this room is for, and who it is not
Book it if: you have a mixed-age group, you want a hard puzzle room without horror, you like eighties sci-fi and monster fiction, you are booking a kids birthday for confident older children, or you want the most challenging hour at Hawthorn.
Pick something else if: you specifically want to be frightened, or you have very young children who are uneasy in the dark.
Age. All ages with an adult in the room. It works well for children from around ten, and for a younger group or a nervous child, The Nine-Nine at the same venue is our Not scary tier with no dark or eerie content at all.
The dark. The room uses low light and atmosphere, so it is not the right pick for a child who is genuinely frightened of the dark. It is eerie rather than threatening, and nothing jumps out or chases anyone, but the lighting is part of the effect.
Claustrophobia. You are never locked in and the exit is always available. The room is not built around confinement.
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 through the game. 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. That matters more in a family group than people expect, because it means a younger player can contribute properly rather than watching.
Groups and parties. Two to six players. Hawthorn has three rooms, so a larger birthday group can split and play at the same time, with this room and The Nine-Nine both suitable for kids.
Questions people ask before booking
Is Strangest Thing suitable for children?
Yes, with an adult in the room. It is rated Spooky, our second tier, which means eerie and atmospheric rather than frightening. No gore, no jump scares aimed at a child, nothing chasing anyone.
Are there live actors or monsters that chase you?
No. There are no live actors in this or any of our sixteen rooms, at any venue, in any season. Nothing chases you and nothing makes contact.
Is it harder than HackSaw?
Yes. Strangest Thing is four out of five on puzzles, HackSaw is three. HackSaw is far scarier. They are different jobs.
What is the hardest escape room at Rush Hawthorn?
This one, at four out of five. Our five out of five rooms are Da Vinci Down Under and Mission:Possible at Chadstone.
Is it a good first escape room?
A very good one, as long as the group is comfortable with low light. The puzzles are challenging, but the room escalates with your progress rather than punishing you, which is a much better first experience than a timer that just runs out.
Can we play it as adults without kids?
Most groups who play it are adults. All ages means it does not exclude children, not that it is aimed at them.
Where it sits in the network
Three rooms at Hawthorn, deliberately covering three different registers so a mixed group can split and everyone gets the hour they came for.
| Room | Scare | Difficulty | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| HackSaw | Terrifying | 3 / 5 | Trap horror, visceral and confined. 16 and over. The original. |
| Strangest Thing | Spooky | 4 / 5 | Eighties sci-fi monster hunt. The hardest room at Hawthorn, and all ages. |
| The Nine-Nine | Not scary | 3 / 5 | Comedy precinct caper. No horror content at all, the youngest-friendly pick. |
At the same Spooky tier elsewhere, Alice in Wonderland at St Kilda is a dark fairytale at three out of five. If you want the frightening end instead, The Conjoining at St Kilda, It's Nightmare at South Yarra and HackSaw: Remastered at Chadstone are our Terrifying rooms. See the full range.
Finding us in Hawthorn
Strangest Thing is one of three escape rooms at Rush Hawthorn, 606 Glenferrie Road, in the middle of the Glenferrie strip and a short walk from Glenferrie Station. Easy from Kew, Camberwell, Canterbury, Balwyn, Glen Iris, Richmond, Burwood, Box Hill and the inner east, and simple on the train from the CBD.
It is a good venue for a birthday because two of the three rooms suit kids, the strip has everywhere you would want for cake or dinner afterwards, and nobody has to drive far to get there.
Sessions run seven days. Two to six players, sixty minutes, instant confirmation and free rescheduling up to two hours before your start time.