My usual fellow escape room buddies and I (4 adults in total) tried this
room (at the invitation of Exitus Escape Room Macquarie) on their opening long
weekend in February 2016. This was our 26th room in
Sydney (and our 36th room in Australia) so far…
Strike Bowling already runs Escapism at King Street Wharf in Sydney (and
in other states of Australia as well). They recently acquired Exitus, an
independent escape room operator in Melbourne, which had mixed reviews on
TripAdvisor. The rooms at Exitus Escape Room Macquarie are a
mix of rooms designed by Exitus (Moonshot and Injustice) and Escapism
(Forensic). Interestingly, Forensic at King Street Wharf is being
replaced soon with Casino Royale, which is supposed to be their hardest room.
My team had already escaped from each of the 3 Escapism rooms at King
Street Wharf and those rooms were reasonably good (but the service was below
average), so we went into Exitus Macquarie with average/low expectations.
We did 2 rooms on the same night at Exitus Macquarie. The first was Moonshot, which was a truly bad
room (and we had a truly bad experience).
See my separate review here.
We then had a break over dinner to recharge (and bitch about the crazy-rude game
master that we had for Moonshot). We
then returned 90 minutes later to try out this second room.
Firstly, as for what I liked about Exitus Macquarie’s Jailbreak:
1. The theming over all was pretty good. The props were generally ok. They had some hidden items/puzzles that I
thought was done really well. However,
the backstory didn’t match some of the puzzles.
2. The puzzles all worked without any major flaws.
And here’s what I didn’t like so much:
1. The story in this room, whilst stronger than in Moonshot, was still
pretty weak. You were in jail for a
crime you allegedly did not commit, but there was very little detail given
about the crime, your sentence, your background, etc. These details were all irrelevant to the puzzles.
2. The puzzles themselves were pretty simplistic and not overly impressive. Unlike Moonshot, there were not any errors in
the puzzles, which was good. However,
there was again the lazy use of blacklight hidden text in one puzzle, which was
a let down.
5. The flow of the room is poor. They have some really cool spaces
that are themed pretty well – at least I thought this until I realised that
much of the space is not part of the game and is just storage for electrics and
other services. This was really disappointing.
7. Again, I didn’t like their clue
system. My feedback on Strike Bowling’s Escapism rooms at King Street
Wharf was that the escape rooms are an “add on” to Strike’s main business of
alcohol sales (together with bowling and karaoke). Almost every time with
Escapism, we called for clues and the phone rang out, or we escaped and nobody
knew we had done so (until we lined up at the bar and made our way to the front
to speak with the gamemaster/bartender).
8. What is Strike’s solution to this? Make the clue system almost
entirely automated, requiring little to no staff member involvement.
That’s right, there are QR codes all over the room and if you get stuck, you
can get a clue or an answer to any puzzle (but this costs 5 points and 10 points
respectively). It is still not clear to me what “points” are – I assume
they add to your total time to escape, but I’m not sure if one point equals one
minute. I find this really lazy and it does not at all address my
criticism that in order to have a great experience, you need a dedicated
gamemaster for each room. Their hint system is even worse than Escapism –
instead of having a busy bartender/gamemaster, you now have no gamemaster at
all.
9. We escaped with plenty of time (somewhere around the 30 minute mark I
think by memory). There were not enough
puzzles in this room.
10. Another aspect of their automated clue system that I really dislike is
that after escaping from the room, you then need to run outside and scan
another QR code on the wall to “stop the clock”. This is poorly thought
through. There is one QR exit code for all of the rooms at Exitus
Macquarie. So what happens when 2 or more rooms get out at the same time
– I can see this not working well at all.
11. Some of you also won’t like the fact that Exitus Macquarie will take
your credit card on arrival. This is to cover your drinks/food purchases
but also to cover them for any damage you cause to the room. They will
also make you lock up your phones for the duration of the escape (this always
annoys me given we typically have our kid with a babysitter, who can’t contact
us in the case of an emergency).
12. Consistent with Escapism, they also book you in for a certain time and
then make you wait 30 minutes (or thereabouts) before going into the
room. This is a not-so-subtle attempt at getting you to buy drinks/food
from the bar/waiting area.
13. Their prices are too steep for the quality of this room. Their
prices are a flat rate for the room, which is $100 Mon-Thurs or $150
Fri-Sun. For a standard group of 4 people, this puts their weekend rate
at about the most expensive in Sydney at $37.50 per head, and couples at an amazing
$75 per head. None of their rooms justify this price tag.
14. I have also made this comment with Escapism – I think they are cheap to
only offer 50 minutes to escape. This is again aimed at making money and
not at providing a great experience for customers.
Simply put, this is an average room.
There are certainly worse rooms out there, but there are also many
better rooms. As always, the major determining factor in how I judge rooms is
the fun factor. This room was ok,
but quickly forgotten.
Where: Macquarie
Centre (Herring Road and Waterloo Road, North Ryde)
Duration: 50
minutes
Themes: 3 themes
Cost:
$100 (flat room rate Mon-Thurs and $150 Fri-Sun)
Overall Summary: Average at best
