Looking for an escape room in Geelong? Or happy to head to Melbourne? This one is for you puzzle hounds.
If you’re looking for something a little different for your next day out and don’t mind being locked in a small, creepy room where you have to solve puzzles and brainteasers then we reckon you should consider visiting some of the best escape rooms in the region.
They’re pretty fun (unless you’re claustrophobic), immersive and sometimes quite thrilling, but most of all it’s a unique thing to do with your pals, your family or even on a date.
So take a look at the 10 best escape rooms our region has to offer.
Looking for more fun things to do? Check out our entertainment section.
CONTAINAPHOBIA, Geelong
Opening late last year, CONTAINAPHOBIA is one of the newest escape rooms to grace the region, giving local thrill-seekers something to get excited about.
Coined as a ‘horror escape room’, this live puzzle is housed in an undisclosed location that you find out upon booking. The room – Mahem Manor Escape Room – sees two to four participants put their heads together for 60 minutes of hair-raising fun and death-defying horror. The story for this one follows a mysterious text from your best friend, encouraging participants to either face the danger of the unknown or leave your friend to her fate.
More than a challenge, this horror escape room questions your sanity as you try to unravel the mystery and face your worst nightmares – all within 70 minutes. Oh, FYI Bending and the ability to crawl on your hands and knees will be required.
With a ticking clock and a closed door, this is sure to get hearts pumping for Christmas. The escape room will operate every day with a variety of times available.
You can book via the website.
Escapade Puzzle Games Escape Room, Ballarat
Located in Ballarat, Escapade is a live-action, interactive escape experience that will test your mental strength as you attempt to solve a complex series of puzzles and clues in order to be victorious and thwart the evils that lie within.
Offering a fully immersive and intense experience that pushes you to the limits of your mind, this venue currently offers three different escape rooms. There’s ‘Panic! At The Escape Room’ (4 players max) where you’re locked in a dark room, ‘Dr Skinner’s Office’ which sees participants become detectives investigating a spate of recent abductions and horrible murders, and ‘Area 61’, where you are trying to make sense of a peculiar missing person’s case.
Each room is completely different, challenging and thrilling in its own way, with only 60 minutes on the clock to solve the mystery.
We’d recommend that you pick your team of 2-5 people carefully because each person’s wit and capabilities will be tested but ultimately you will rely on teamwork to solve the puzzle. Consider rounding up the thinkers, doers, and strategists, puzzle solvers, escape artists, and mathematicians in your friendship group!
The rooms cost about $40 per person (pending on how many players you rock up with) and we reckon it’s totally worth it.
Escapade is located in the heritage-listed Ranger Barracks at 3/61 Curtis Street Ballarat Central. You can book your tickets here.
Trapt, Melbourne
Located in the heart of Melbourne, Trapt is a classic horror escape room offering several multi-sensory puzzles for you and your code-cracking crew.
Housed in the basement of the heritage Keep & Co building, the hidden venue will transport you to worlds you could previously only imagine with six different rooms to choose from: Alchemy I & II, The Wizard of Oz, Under The Big Top, Cave In and Space. Inside each room you have 50 minutes to find clues and solve puzzles to escape before time runs out, all while challenging your thinking and putting your teamwork skills to the test.
It’s actually the final run for Alchemy I & II, which are Harry Potter-inspired escape rooms. Here, you’re literally ‘trapt’ until you work out a series of riddles in order to hunt down the mythical Philosopher’s Stone. You can even book two simultaneous sessions and race against the clock and your mates. Better be quick though, these rooms will end on March 31.
The best part (in our opinion) is that it’s actually a licensed venue with a bar serving ice cold beers, tasty cocktails and pizzas to help celebrate or commiserate your escapes. While Alchemy is still in play, the bar will even be serving up non-alcoholic Butterscotch Beer.
It’s about $80 for a team of two (approx. $40 per person) and you can book your tickets here. Trapt is located at 377 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne.
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Escape Room Geelong Prison Break, Fyansford
Swap Fox River for Fyansford and channel your inner Michael Scofield at this intense escape prison-inspired escape room.
Placed in cuffs (optional but how could you not!?), shackled together and locked in a cell, participants have just 45 minutes to pick yourself free and use what’s around you to escape your cell.
Truly embracing the theme, this escape room is actually located at the Paper Mills in Fyansford in one of the bluestone buildings on the side of a cliff overlooking the river, guaranteeing those feelings of being locked up in an old school prison.
This one is perfect for groups between 2 and 10, with the venue even offering night sessions across Friday and Saturdays at 8:30pm. These one’s are extra creepy as the only light you’re given is a lantern. Prices range from $47-$49 per person, depending on the number of participants.
Expect theatrics and mind-bending puzzles that will get the adrenaline pumping!
Escape Room Geelong Prison Break is located at 5/100 Lower Paper Mills Road, Fyansford. Book your escape here.
Rush Escape Game, South Yarra and Hawthorn
Hailed as one of Melbourne’s best escape rooms, Rush Escape Room will see you testing your wits in a number of different time-based challenges. With two locations, there’s currently nine incredible escape room that offers completely different experiences, depending on how much of a rush you’re wanting.
Over at South Yarra, choose to take a trip down the rabbit hole in ‘The Matrix’, embrace your inner Dwayne Johnson in ‘Cluemanji’, or join the ranks of the world’s greatest spy agency with ‘Bond’.
Take it up a notch and confront the entity haunting a grieving father’s dreams in ‘Its Nightmare’ (this one is R15+) or rise as a knight in ‘The Last Knight Rises’.
Over at the Hawthorn location, the Rush team will have you scratching your head and hunting monsters with a ‘Strangest Thing’, or catch bad guys and look good doing it with ‘The Nine-Nine’ escape experience.
If you’re really looking for a thrill, they’ve actually turned to the Saw horror film franchise to create an escape room, so much so that they’ve rated this one 18+… seriously. Coined ‘Hacksaw’, this live-action puzzle stays true to the spirit of the original films, testing your daring nerve and critical thinking as you sift through (mock) blood, sharp objects, and dead bodies in a confined space decked out to resemble a dingey bathroom complete with a shower and toilet.
We’ve heard you actually start this escape chained up. Oh boy.
With plenty of themes to choose from, the only thing you need to worry about is coming up with a team who can help you unravel riddles, crack cases and sleuth solutions in the most daring escape room Melbourne wide. So, do you want to play a game?
Check it all out here. Find them at 160 Toorak Rd, South Yarra and 606 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn.
Escape Room Geelong – The Mad Scientist, Belmont
Another Geelong-based escape room, this themed interactive adventure is from the same creators as the aforementioned Prison Break experience.
Mixing up the storyline, this one is dubbed ‘The Mad Scientist’, and is centred around a professor who was kicked out of the military for his shady dealings and soon enough disappeared altogether. Here his wife contacts you and wants you to help figure out where he went and what the heck happened to the guy.
Set up in multiple stages, each with its own set of clues, participants must work together to solve puzzles and progress through the game within 45 minutes, which is both challenging but still solvable. Suited for four people, this is a room perfect for those just starting their escape room journey!
The game master is also an absolute legend so that always helps too.
Escape Room Geelong The Mad Scientist is located at 9 Queen St, Belmont. You can book here.
Breakout Bendigo, Bendigo
You might not think there’d be an incredibly puzzling escape room in the Goldfields, but Breakout Bendigo is serving up the sort of brain-teasers that would baffle even the most seasoned pro. The first of its kind in the area, Breakout Bendigo currently has three themed rooms to choose from, all of which you have 60 minutes to escape from.
There’s ‘Espionage’ which is all about embarking on a top-secret mission and rated 7/10 difficulty; ‘Murder Hotel’ which has a difficulty rating of 8/10 and is all about unravelling the mystery of missing people; and their newest room, ‘Wizarding Wands’. Rated 6/10 difficulty, this one sees fresh new wizards (the participants) attend a prestigious school of witchcraft and wizardry. When four master bands vanish, creating chaos, the wizards must venture into the forbidden castle, find and retrieve the wands to restore balance among your wizarding school and fellow houses!
Prices start at $38 per person for two people to $180 for a group of six. Check it out here. Breakout Bendigo Escape Games is located at 155A Lyttleton Terrace, Bendigo.
Escape Room Geelong, South Geelong
And finally, Geelong’s original live puzzle game.
Here, you have been short-listed for the role of Magician’s Assistant. Arriving at an old brick barn, you’ll find the Magic Room. Your task is to solve a series of puzzles in order to prove your skills… and remember to look carefully, things are not always as they seem.
Participants will have 70 minutes to unravel the mystery, working as a team of two to five to solve a variety of quirky and inventive puzzles to escape.
Ideal for first-timers (not too hard, not too easy) and, while designed for adults, is appropriate for children over the age of 15 accompanied by an adult. Visit the website here.
Escape Room Geelong is located at 25 Foster St, South Geelong.
Woodbury Escape Rooms, South Melbourne
We know you all love a good horror-themed activity, and this is one horror escape room that will have you quaking in your boots.
Located in South Melbourne, there are four rooms to choose from, each with their own terrifying storyline, increasing fear levels and escalating difficulty ratings.
Beginners are encouraged to start in the wild west with ‘Wanted’, and the island mystery ‘The Curse of Kidd Island’, while those looking for more of a thrill should definitely check out ‘Little Playful Things’, a story that follows abandoned toys.
For the true horror fans, ‘Leaper’ is the fourth in Woodbury’s series of rooms, and the highest on their ‘Difficulty’ and ‘Fear’ scales. Here, participants are detectives who can ‘leap’ into the minds of criminals using experimental crime-fighting technology. The issue? If you don’t get in and out within 60 minutes, you’re trapped in their mind forever. Prepare one heck of an adrenaline rush.
The experiences have a huge focus on collaboration, so pick your teams wisely if you plan on taking out the win.
Woodbury Escape Rooms is located at 259 Park St, South Melbourne. Check it out here.
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Adventure Rooms, Melbourne CBD
Hailed as one of Melbourne’s hardest escape rooms (with over 70% of punters failing to escape), Adventure Rooms Melbourne is all about thinking outside the box to try and find all the hidden and mysterious objects, escape the room and beat the clock.
Originally the creation of a physics master in Bern, Switzerland, the Melbourne edition is conveniently located in Bourke Street Mall, making it the ideal experience for those hunting for something new and different in the city.
The cool thing about this escape room is that it has two formats to choose from: a standard escape room and a duel adventure. The standard option is for two to seven players to engage in 60 minutes of gameplay, while the duel adventure is designed for bigger groups of between eight and 14. This one allows teams to compete against each other in a cat-and-mouse style game. This way Team A has to escape while Team B has to try to catch them before they are able to escape. After 30 minutes the roles are reversed.
As for the rooms themselves, you can try to defeat the enemy and escape the castle in the horror escape ‘The Black Queen’, escape the house of a twisted genius in ‘The Mad Scientist’, or work with your team to reclaim your freedom and escape the cell in ‘Gaol Break’.
Adventure Room is located at Basement/306 Little Collins St, Melbourne. Book your escape here.
Looking for more fun things to do around the region? Check out 17 day trips to take close to Geelong.
