New Sydney escape room business - Cubic Escape Room Sydney

 

Hi everyone

I recently learned that a new escape room business is about to open in Sydney.  They are called Cubic Escape Room Sydney and are based at Level 1, 741 George Street, Haymarket.  Those of you who ever went to Break the Code will recognise the address -  Cubic Escape Room has taken the premises that used to be occupied by Break the Code (before they closed down).  

I contacted Cubic Escape Room and asked them a few questions about their business (to help me write this post).  Firstly though, they will have 3 rooms at the time that they open.  The summaries of each of their rooms are below:

1.       Memento

The brain is the most complex organism in the universe with billions of cells and trillions of interlinked pathways creating a perfect cognitive machine. Imagine if we could infiltrate this system – experience someone else’s memories firsthand, or even alter or erase memories entirely?

You and your team are employees of Cubic Lobe. Today, you’ve been given a new client and a task like no other. Are you up to the task? Can you navigate the brain’s synapses, solve the puzzles of the mind, and complete your task in time?

A journey into the mind!All-age-friendly story!The ending is up to you!

Capacity: 2-6 people

Time Limit: 70 minutes

Age Limit: suitable for 12 and over, you will need to have at least 2 members over 15.

Difficulty Level:  3/5 

2.      The Recording Device

A psychology hospital, a deadly murder, a raging thunderstorm, and you, the innocent bystanders. One thing is for certain – there’s no way in and no way out. Hurry! The clock is ticking…

Can you crack the case and find the truth before everything is too late?

Choose your character and step into the case! A killer on the loose and a trail of clues. Can you solve the case?

Capacity: 2-8 people

Time Limit: 80 minutes

Age Limit: suitable for 12 and over, you will need to have at least 2 members over 15.

Difficulty Level:  4.5/5

 

3.       Project Delta

In 2052, you have been recruited to join Rainbow Galactic’s team of astronauts under the Project Delta Agreement. Your mission is to fly onboard spaceship Venus and carry biological clone experiments on other terrestrial planets to achieve space colonization through genetic engineering. Will you be able to revolutionize the entire human race or will the project’s dark secrets consume you first?

Our most popular room! An astronaut adventure in space! Huge trap behind the truth!

Capacity: 2-8 people

Time Limit: 100 minutes

Age Limit: suitable for 12 and over, you will need to have at least 2 members over 15.

Difficulty:  5/5

One of the owners of Cubic Escape Room Sydney told me that he met his wife in an escape room in Sydney and since that time, they both agreed that they would like to start an escape room business because it was something that they both enjoyed and were interested in.  He described their rooms as having a great storyline, being quite high-tech, containing mechanical elements, logical puzzles and an overall immersive experience.

Cubic Escape Room is planning on opening in the middle of April 2021.  At the time of their opening, they will have 3 rooms, but there plan is to open a fourth room in July 2021.

The owners of Cubic Escape Room have offered for my team to come and beta test their rooms before they open.  As always, I will report back here with my reviews of the rooms. 

Thanks

Scott

New Sydney escape room business - IceBreak Escape Room

Hi everyone

I recently learned that a new escape room business has opened in Sydney, by the name of Icebreak Escape Room.  They are located at Suite 3, Level 8, 428 George Street, Sydney.  

I sent them an email and one of the owners, Rose came back to me and has answered some of my questions about her business (to help me write this post).

Rose worked in an escape room as a part-time job for 2.5 years and she found it to be a really good industry to work in.  So, together with her husband and 2 friends, Rose decided to start their own business. 

Icebreak opened back on 1 October 2020.  They have 3 room themes, the summaries of which are below:

1.   Silent

There was once a famous fortune-teller who lived in an older cabin.  As long as you give him enough gold coins, he would answer all your questions.  However, one day, the old cabin became deathly quiet.  Now, you are in front of Mr Slient's old cabing seeking to know your own future...

Duration: 60 mins  Capacity:  2-5 people  Difficulty 3/5

2.   X-Case

In an abandoned factory office, there was a mysterious murder.  Police searched this area and have no clue.  So they called you as a detective to help.  You came to the factory, but found things are far from a simple murder case.

Duration:  60 min   Capacity:  3-6 people   Difficulty:  3.5/5

3.   Vanishing

Recently a young architect has been reported missing after receving a large inheritance.  His concerned friends have come to you for help.  Will you be able to find out what has happened?

Duration:  80 mins   Capacity: 2-10 people   Difficulty:  4/5 

 

Rose describes their rooms as being very story-based and largely linear in design.  They have brought the rooms to Australia from China, but have changed approximately 30-50% of each of the rooms to fit the style of the Australian escape room market.  Rose also told me that their rooms are always evolving, as they learn from their customers' experiences and feedback. 

My team and I will hopefully get over to Icebreak soon and as always, I will post my reviews here.

Thanks

Scott

 

Next Level Escape - The Game Review (Sydney)

 

Hi everyone!

Just before Christmas 2020, my team managed to finally get back to Next Level to check out their latest rooms.  We have enjoyed all of our experiences at Next Level, right back to when they opened and they had a 15 minute blitz room, to pop-up experiences they have designed for conventions through to their online and physical rooms. 

A little over 2 months ago now, my team and I tried out Next Level Escape’s The Game.  In fact, we tried 2 of their rooms back to back – both The Show Must Go On and The Game rooms.  

This time we were our usual team of 4 adults.  The Game was our 162nd room to date (and our 95th room in Sydney).

Here is the summary of The Game from Next Level Escape’s website:

 

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the greatest game of the century is back! Split your group into two teams, Red and Blue, and compete for fame and fortune. Will your team leave in a blaze of glory or in a cloud of shame? If you’ve ever wanted to be on a TV game show, this is your big chance!

Oh, and ignore the remnants of the Green Team, our crew is working on cleaning that up…

IT’S TIME TO PLAY THE GAME!

As always, I’ll start off with what I liked about the room:

• simply put, this is one of my favourite rooms I have played to date;
• firstly, the theme is right up my alley - a competive room, jam-packed full of puzzles in which players are split up into different coloured teams fighting it out for bragging rights to wear the victor's crown. What's not to like? 
• The Game contains a series of puzzles which each team races to complete.  Without going into details, many of the puzzles contain elements from different games from my childhood.  I really enjoyed this element (and the room theme completely allows for this fantastic flexibility of puzzle choices);
• the quality of theming and props was incredible throughout all aspects of The Game;
• The Game is one of those very few escape rooms in the market where players are not only racing the clock, but where teams are racing each other.  The only other rooms I can think of where this is the case are where escape room businesses have built the same room twice (and therefore 2 different teams can simultaneously play the same room, racing for bragging rights to escape first).  Good examples of this in Sydney, for those who are interested, are Ex Libris at Next Level Escape and Gateway 9A at Parapark.  In The Game, I found the race between the teams to be incredibly stressful, and it certainly had our adrenalin running.  I loved it;
• there are so many other clever elements of this room I could talk about: clever use of hunt and seek puzzle elements, dilemmas posed to players when considering to ask for a hint (because the downside is that the other team can listen in), etc, but my absolute favourite element is the design of the overall experience.  Again, this is a spoiler-free zone so I can't go into this at all, but suffice it to say that I have played around 170 escape room experiences at the time of writing this review, and I cannot think of a room design that I have been as impressed by as much as I was impressed by The Game.  The puzzle and room flow are as good as it gets;
• this wouldn't be a Next Level Room if it didn't contain a heap of humour and laughs, which it certainly did; and
• Aaron was an excellent game master for our team on the day and as always, we had a long chat with Aaron and Leanne afterwards about the room, the various puzzle elements, how they came up with the design, etc. 

The biggest compliment that I think I can give to Aaron and Leanne is that this was one of my absolute favourite rooms to date, and that is despite the fact that I was on the losing team on the day!

The Game is competitive, stressful, bright and fun, jam-packed full of interesting puzzles and incredibly well-designed. It is also family-friendly.

I don't remember how long it took our team to complete The Game, but I enjoyed every minute.

I love all of the rooms at Next Level Escape, but The Game is my new favourite. 

Where:                   Lower Ground, 23 O'Connell Street, Sydney

Duration:               75 minutes

Themes:                4 (plus an online game)

TERPECA:              #225 in 2024 (formerly #106)

Cost:                      $52pp per team of 4 (we played at the kind invitation of the owners)

Overall Rating:      One of my absolute favourite rooms (and I was on the losing team!)

More details:          https://www.nextlevelescape.com.au/

Next Level Escape - The Show Must Go On Review (Sydney)

 

Hi everyone!

Just before Christmas 2020, my team managed to finally get back to Next Level to check out their latest rooms.  We have enjoyed all of our experiences at Next Level, right back to when they opened and they had a 15 minute blitz room, to pop-up experiences they have designed for conventions through to their online and physical rooms. 

A little over 2 months ago now, my team and I tried out Next Level Escape’s The Show Must Go On room (TSMGO).  In fact, we tried 2 of their rooms back to back – both TSMGO and The Game rooms.  

This time we were our usual team of 4 adults.  TSMGO was our 161^st room to date (and our 94^th room in Sydney).

Here is the summary of TSMGO from Next Level Escape’s website:

 

The Inner City Amateur Dramatic Society welcomes you to their production of Scenes From Romeo and Juliet. You’ll be a huge part of the play! As stagehands! Underneath the stage! Isn’t that great?

 

Most of the cast and crew haven’t abandoned the play (hah!), everyone totally remembers their lines, the lead actors definitely don’t hate each other, and the rigging is in perfect condition. Really. It’ll be the most relaxing experience you’ve ever had.

 

An audio play, interactive performance and escape room, The Show Must Go On is a unique experience that will have you laughing as you help this bunch of amateurs put on a production no one will ever forget!

As always, I’ll start off with what I liked about the room:

• this room was fun! We played the roles of stage hands scrambling to fix issues as they arose with our play, all from beneath the stage.  This room is an excellent example of how to theme a room – all surfaces of the experience were well themed and the puzzles and puzzle elements all made sense in the space;
• there was a really nice mix of different puzzles in the space, including a little hunt and seek fun (which my team is consistently poor at…);
• whilst this room is heavy on the narrative, there is also a lot of tech in the room (which, again, really fits in with the room theme (ie we aren’t talking lasers for the sake of lasers here);
• there are also some really nicely-designed low-tech puzzles in the space, which were really fun to solve;
• as always, Next Level threads humour throughout their rooms and TSMGO was no exception; and
• adding to the immersion was our at-times-overly-(yet-perfectly)-dramatic game master, ably performed by Aaron, one of the owners of Next Level.  This really added to the fun (and the theme completely lends itself to a game master coming in and out of the space throughout the experience).

I have nothing at all to report in relation to any negative or constructive areas of TSMGO.  We had a heap of fun.  This room was family friendly and would suit new players and more experienced players alike. 

This was the first physical room that my team and I had played together in about a year, so we were a little rusty but it didn’t take long to get back into the swing. As always, we spent some time after the experience chatting with owners Aaron and Leanne about the room and they took us through how the room came together, each of the puzzles, etc. We were also handed a Broadway "playbill" style program of the play, which was an incredibly nice touch (and well done Aaron for chasing us down and finding us to hand us the playbill :-)

My team had a ball playing TSMGO.  It was great to come back to Next Level after such a long break.  It was also really nice going back to the CBD and feeling like life has returned to normal (at least to some extent).

Where:                   Lower Ground, 23 O'Connell Street, Sydney

Duration:               50-70 minutes

Themes:                4 (plus an online game)

Cost:                      $52pp per team of 4 (we played at the kind invitation of the owners)

Overall Rating:      Incredibly fun, narrative-based room

More details:          https://www.nextlevelescape.com.au/

Temporal Tangle (online this time) - Enigma Rooms/Next Level Escape Review

Hi everyone

Back in late 2019, my team were invited by the owners of The Enigma Room to come and check out their new room, A Temporal Tangle.  These were in the days before COVID, when leaving your house to attend a physical escape room was the norm.  We loved the experience, which focused on a strong narrative.  You can read my full review of that experience here.

During the Covid 2020 pandemic, The Enigma Room owners developed A Temporal Tangle as an online game that could be played at home.  They used photo spheres of each room, with all relevant elements in the room capable of being zoomed in or clicked on by players at home using their computer's mouse (think 1990s adventure games).  There is no live game master in A Temporal Tangle (at home edition), which means players can start their adventure whenever they like and there is no time pressure at all.

Leanne and Aaron invited me check out their new online offering, which I did during lockdown with my 7yo and my mother in law.  I controlled the mouse and they played the game (with no help from me).  This was my 145th escape room experience.  They really enjoyed themselves.  In fact, my 7yo wrote a one page review of her own, which was well received by Leanne and Aaron. I won't post her review letter here (because it is 90% spoilers), but she said things like "I found it sooooooooooooo much fun!!!!!!!"

She enjoyed it so much, she even drew a picture:

Pretty high praise from the 7 year old.  

From my perspective, as someone who has also played the real life version of the room, I think the photo spheres worked really well.  We had no issues at all during our play through.  As always, online rooms are much slower than real life rooms (because players can't divide and conquer).  But the online version provided my 7yo and mother in law with about 2 hours of fun.  

At the time of (finally) writing up this review, I have been to around 15 online rooms from all over the world.  I am pleased to confirm that A Temporal Tangle is the best Non Live room that I have experienced to date.  As well as being able to play at your own pace (which can be nice for newer players or families playing together), one of the biggest benefits of Non Live rooms is that they are very reasonably priced.  Given they don't require a live actor, this brings the cost way down for escape room businesses.  

Please note that The Enigma Room has recently closed down, but the online version of A Temporal Tangle is available going forward at Next Level Escape - see their details below.

Where:                         Virtual room (online)

Virtual Room Type:     Non Live

Duration:                     60-120 minutes (not limited)

Themes:                      3 themes 

Cost:                            $15 per device

Overall Rating:            Time travel awesomeness, from home!

More details:                https://www.nextlevelescape.com.au/

Online or Virtual Escape Rooms (and their different forms)

 

Hi everyone

Now that I am finally getting around to writing up reviews of the various online escape rooms that I have tried out over the past 6 months or so, I thought it might be useful to post a short note about the different types of online escape rooms. 

Whilst online or "virtual" escape rooms come in all different shapes and sizes, they seem to fall into 3 main categories:

• Non Live - these are non-live experiences (ie you play at your own pace and there is no live game master/avatar - these are typically point and click);

• Live Avatar - these are live games where a real game master acts as your avatar (ie typically, the game master attaches a camera to his/her head and acts as players' eyes and hands in a real world escape room via a video link, typically over zoom); and 

• Live Experience - these games come in different forms, but involve a live game master via a video link but not in a real world physical room (ie the game master does not act as your avatar).

There are so many online escape rooms available now that the above categories might no longer be 100% accurate for all games and there are some that are a blend of 2 of the above categories.  However, for the purposes of this blog, I will use the above short-cuts as a summary of the type of experience in each of my reviews.  

A really useful website for finding the right online room for your group is Live Video Escape Rooms, which you can check out here.  They adopt the same type of classification of online rooms that I have outlined above. 

Thanks

Scott

Mystery Mail Enchanted Forest - ELUDE Escape Rooms Review

 

Hi everyone

Julia and Darren, the owners of ELUDE Escape Rooms in Galston kindly invited my daughter and I to beta test one of their first "Mystery Mails" entitled Enchanted Forest.  The idea behind the Mystery Mails is that customers can purchase an at home escape room experience/set of puzzles for someone they know and ELUDE will then post them out to that person without identifying who arranged and paid for it.  Only when the player completes the experience and enters the results at a specified web address will they learn who sent them the Mystery Mail.  

Mystery Mails can therefore be sent as anonymous presents for Christmas, birthdays, etc.  After having completed this experience, my daughters and I sent another Mystery Mail to my wife for Mother's Day (which she and my eldest daughter recently completed and both enjoyed).  Enchanted Forest was our 145th escape room (or escape room-like) experience).   

My daughter was 7 years old at the time that we played Enchanted Forest.  We both really enjoyed the puzzles, which were fun and well-themed.  My daughter needed some help with the algebra puzzles, as she hadn't yet learned how algebra works at school.  But otherwise, she pretty much completed the rest of the puzzles by herself (or with some very minor hints from me).  The quality of the printing was very strong and my daughter loved the ELUDE wax seal on the outside of the envelope :-)

We completed Enchanted Forest in a little under an hour.  I think this represents really great value for money, given the very reasonable price tag of only $20. 

I think ELUDE is one of those companies that adapted to Covid really well, having offered both Mystery Mails and online escape rooms to players who were jonesing for a fix.  

I can see Mystery Mails being really popular for families in particular, and depending on the age of the child/ren, would be really great for children or even for kids' parties. ELUDE now offer 6 different Mystery Mails, some of which are aimed at older children (16+) and adults. So there is something for everyone.

We had a lot of fun and my daughter's review was that "it was really, really fun!!!! I liked it 100 out of 10".

Where:                        Play at home

Virtual Room Type:    Non Live

Duration:                    Unlimited time to complete (estimated 1-2 hours)

Themes:                     6 mystery mails (and 3 real life escape rooms)

Cost:                           $20 (but we beta tested this for the owners)

Overall Rating:           A really fun, family-friendly escape room experience at home

More details:              http://www.eludegames.com/