Back in January 2022, our team of 4 adults returned to ELUDE to play their fourth room, Torquay. We have been to ELUDE 4 times before to play each of their other rooms (including a pop up room at Rhodes) and we have always had a great time.
Julia and Darren are awesome owners. They are enthusiasts themselves (and have played more rooms than I have) and it absolutely shows in their room design and puzzles.
Torquay was my 209th escape room experience. The theme of the room is as follows:
Travel to the English Riviera to help Emma find her grandfather’s fortune. The eccentric Major Gowen used to take his granddaughter to Torquay beach, he has set up a treasure hunt for her to find the gold bar. The only clue you have is a photo of Major Gowen taken at the beachside location of Torquay.
Here’s what I thought about Torquay:
· my initial thoughts upon entering the room were that it was a truly beautiful space. From a theming perspective, we felt like we were on the other side of the world. The colours and props used are all beautiful and it absolutely made for a wow factor when we opened our eyes;
· there are so many puzzles in Torquay! And there is such a huge variety of puzzles, many of which were truly unique – some of my favourite puzzles are where designers uses common items that you would expect to see in the space and turn them into puzzle elements. Julia and Darren did this in so many different ways – the puzzles were challenging, unique, varied and fun. More than once, we saw puzzle elements that we had not seen used anywhere else, which is so rare these days after having played so many rooms;
· the backstory was well-executed and made sense and again, the puzzle elements all felt like they belonged (which really is a rare thing in escape rooms in my experience);
· the room design was brilliant. The room is largely non-linear, with some points where players converge. There is plenty of subtle signposting though that this all felt seamless. And did I mention there were a lot of puzzles?
· Torquay is 100% family-friendly. There are no jump scares or even mildly scary elements – although on the challenging end, this is a great family-friendly experience.
My team LOVED this room. It is easily up there with the best rooms in the country. I can’t think of many other rooms where we had as much fun as we did in Torquay. As always, Darren and Julia were kind enough to take us through every puzzle after we escaped, showing us all of the easter eggs and talking to us about design elements and how they came up with different ideas. This part is as much fun as playing the room itself ;-)
Where: ELUDE, 11e Mid Dural Road, Galston
Duration: 60 minutes
Themes: 4 real life rooms
Cost: $50 per player
Overall Rating: A visually spectacular, awesome room packed full of unique puzzles!
More details: https://eludegames.com.au/escape-rooms/
