Scram Escape Rooms - Toy Rescue Review (Sydney)

Hi all

In January 2021, on my birthday, my wife and I took our girls to play one of Scram’s newest rooms, Toy Rescue at their new Church Street, Parramatta premises.  We had previously played 2 of the rooms at Scram’s other venue (at O’Connell Street) and had enjoyed both games.

Toy Rescue was my 164^th room to date.  The theme of the room is as follows:

It is your kid’s birthday and you are his toys. He is super excited to open one present in particular.  However, his jealous neighbour has snuck in and stolen the present! You can't let this happen! You, as his toys, must retrieve the present and return it to his room before he gets home from school. You have one hour.

Here’s what we thought about Toy Rescue:

• it was immediately clear on entering the room that Scram has significantly improved its theming compared to its earlier rooms at its O’Connell premises.  The theming is much more prominent and clearly a lot of time and effort has been spent;

• Toy Rescue is a room that has clearly been designed for kids.  Our daughters, who were 4 and 8 at the time, really enjoyed the theme.  My wife and I largely sat back and let our girls solve as many puzzles as they could (and only stepped in to help when they weren’t sure what to do next); 
  

• there are some really cool puzzles in Toy Rescue, including some puzzles that we haven’t seen used elsewhere (which is pretty rare);

• the puzzles were all on the easier side and our girls largely managed to escape in about 40 minutes or so; 
  

• we did have a couple of issues with 2 puzzles.  It’s hard to give too much away on that front, but one related to an electronic mechanism not being triggered.  This was actually also a design flaw, because it wasn’t clear that we had solved the puzzle (and had we known, we would have sought help earlier – but given the design of the puzzle, it wasn’t until our game master realised the faulty electronic trigger that we were able to progress.  This was a little disappointing.  The second puzzle I didn’t like was simply a weak puzzle.  It was a puzzle written on a piece of paper and given the quality of the theming throughout the rest of the room, it felt like this was maybe a last minute replacement puzzle for something else that perhaps had broken.  It definitely wasn’t a strong puzzle (and of all of the puzzles, it did not fit the theming of the room at all); and

• the game flow worked well and our girls had a lot of fun.

Where                          240 Church Street, Parramatta 2150 (Level 1)

Duration:                      60 minutes

Themes:                       9 rooms

Cost:                             $168 (team of 4)

Overall Rating:             Well-themed, family-friendly room suited to beginners

More details:                http://www.scramescaperooms.com.au/