Sydney’s Best Escape Rooms

portrait of hotel concierge
Author
14 minutes Oct 6th, 2021
the inside of a dimly lit escape room

When it comes to being locked inside of a room with only your wits and tactical thinking skills to help you escape, Sydneysiders go absolutely nuts for it! Combined with the company of friends and family, you’ve got yourself a recipe for one of the most fun experiences Sydney has to offer.

Whether it’s a team building day for work, a fun day out with the family or competing against your friends to determine who is the smartest, Sydney is home to some of the best escape rooms with a wide variety of fun, spooky and adventurous themes.

However, if you’ve never experienced an escape room before, here’s what you need to know.

What Is An Escape Room?

Also known as a puzzle room or an escape game, an escape room is a game where a group of people are locked inside of a room of their choosing and must solve a series of puzzles in order to figure out how to escape the room.

Players have a limited amount of time, usually one hour, in which they must figure out how to unlock the exit. There is typically one main puzzle that requires a series of smaller puzzles to be solved first, each containing a required piece of the main puzzle.

How Difficult Are Escape Rooms?

The difficulty of an escape room is completely up to the group of people participating. Many places have a selection of escape rooms that are designed for beginners, intermediate and experienced players. If you’re not sure which escape room is best for you, ask the staff there and they can recommend one for you.

Are You Locked In & What Happens If You Don’t Escape?

Once you have entered an escape room, the staff will close the door behind them and the timer will begin counting down. The entrance won’t be locked and you won’t be trapped inside.

If the timer reaches zero and you haven’t found the exit, a staff member will then unlock the door and can walk you through all the clues that you missed.

Can You Do An Escape Room With 2 People?

It all depends on where you go. Most escape rooms in Sydney are designed for groups of up to eight people, but some can have smaller escape rooms that are tailored for two people or more.

Now that you’ve got the basics under your belt, here is where you’ll find Sydney’s best escape rooms.

Entermission Sydney, Sydney CBD

people playing an escape room in vr

If you’re wanting more than just a traditional escape room, then you absolutely have to check out Entermission Sydney for a truly mind-blowing escape room experience – in virtual reality! They also have won the Tripadvisor Travellers’ Choice Award, which gets our seal of approval.

As Sydney’s only virtual reality escape room venue to use hand tracking without controllers and real-life special effects, you will actually feel the heat and wind on your face, and even smell the smoke and gunpowder! You and your friends will have a blast while solving fun puzzles, finding hidden clues and performing impossible feats to complete your mission and escape!

Entermission Sydney offers six incredibly immersive virtual reality escape rooms that will see you flying through outer space, defeating dark horrors, exploring the jungle, assisting a special ops team, delving into the mind of a madman and travelling down a rabbit hole into the world of Alice in Wonderland. With VR escape rooms designed for beginners, experienced players and those who crave a challenge, Entermission Sydney is one of the best escape rooms Sydney has to offer!

Website: https://enterthemission.com/sydney/
Address: 1/484 Kent St, Sydney NSW 2000

Escape Hunt, Sydney CBD

an array of clues spread out of a table

With a wide choice of escape rooms centred around the history of Sydney, Escape Hunt has something for everyone, from first-timers to experienced escape room connoisseurs. They offer three types of escape rooms: traditional indoor escape rooms, outdoor escape rooms and escape rooms that you can play at home.

Their indoor escape rooms feature various difficulty levels and immersive themes including magical wizards, bank heists, the secret service and a noir-inspired pub set in the 1920s. Their outdoor escape rooms involve you travelling through magical portals and investigating top-secret research facilities, using geolocation and augmented reality on a provided iPad to solve a series of fun (and tricky) puzzles.

Equipped with your trusty laptop, PC or smart device, you and your friends can experience the thrill and mystery of an escape room from your very own home. Featuring a selection of hosted and non hosted digital escape rooms, you will work together to defuse ticking time bombs, investigate dark conspiracies, help police catch elusive thieves and more!

Website: https://escapehunt.com/au/sydney/
Address: 4/393 George St, Sydney NSW 2000

PANiQ-ROOM, The Rocks

a dark prison cell with a bed in the middle of the room

Looking for a scary escape room experience? Does being blindfolded and handcuffed surrounded by smoke in a cell raise your eyebrow? Then Paniq Room is exactly what you’re looking for – as long as you don’t get spooked too easily.

Offering four eerie and mysterious escape rooms, Paniq Room will have you and your group searching through rooms of a famous magician’s house to uncover his secrets and unravelling the mystery of who betrayed the head of a major crime family. Try and work together to escape a dark prison cell before the guard returns and test your luck playing the iconic Jumanji board game as the sounds of distant drums slowly grow louder.

Each escape room has been meticulously thought out, providing a challenge at first, but a clever experience for those who are good at thinking outside of the box. This makes Paniq Room the perfect all-rounder escape room venue, mainly catering to those who are wanting a fun experience rather than a brain-busting challenge.

Website: https://www.paniqroom.com.au/
Address: 13 Cambridge St, The Rocks NSW 2000

Next Level Escape, Sydney CBD

someone entering a puzzle room filled with blue neon light

With a focus on providing a personalised experience, Next Level Escape offers a fun selection of escape rooms that each offer a unique theme and challenging yet delightful puzzles to solve. Each group also has their very own Games Master, who serves as an interactive character in the game!

Next Level Escape has something for everyone, from their four challenging escape rooms on-site to their online escape room that has you fight to save the future by uncovering what happened to special agent Fox – who mysteriously disappeared off of the face of the Earth.

Fancy yourself a bookworm? Then their Ex Libris escape room will have you and your group work together to escape a library, complete with additional objectives to complete once you have escaped. If you’re a fan of reality TV, then ‘The Game’ will have you competing against another team for fame and fortune…but could there be more to this game show than meets the eye?

Website: https://www.nextlevelescape.com.au/
Address: LG, 23 O’Connell St, Sydney NSW 2000

Mission Room Escape, Sydney CBD

the bedroom of a haunted mansion puzzle room

With two locations on George St and Pitt St, Mission Room Escape is not for the faint of heart. Offering seven incredibly unique escape rooms, your puzzle-solving skills will be put to the ultimate test as Mission Room Escape stands out in two areas: extremely complex puzzles and dramatic special effects.

As the first mechanical escape room in Sydney, Mission Room Escape utilises special effects, lasers, automation and gears to create an immersive atmosphere that will instantly make you forget about the outside world. Exploring a vampire’s castle during a dark and stormy night, escaping a mad scientist’s laboratory and searching through a lost underground mine are just some of the exciting escape rooms they offer.

For those who want to prove (or show off) their strong logical thinking skills, then their Trapped escape room provides the ultimate challenge. You and your friends play the role of detectives on a mission to uncover who is responsible for an elevator in a commercial that malfunctioned, resulting in two casualties.

Website: https://www.missionsydney.com/
Address: Suite 202/332-336 Pitt St, Sydney NSW 2000

The Cipher Room, Newtown

a lamp on an old desk in a dark puzzle room

With two locations in St Peters and Newtown, The Cipher Room has four action-packed escape rooms that will see you and your group race against the clock to solve a variety of puzzles with a number of different themes, including noir and creepy.

Their Espionage escape room will send you back to 1945 where you’ve just landed a new position as a spy. Upon receiving an urgent message to meet a fellow agent, you enter a safe house to discover they are nowhere to be found. With a series of clues scattered around you, can your team find the secret they were hiding?

The Cabin is another standout escape room, which has your team play the role of a detective who is investigating a serial killer. You receive a suspicious tip that an abandoned cabin has had reports of strange noises coming from inside. With a search warrant in hand, you and your team will have to solve the mystery before time runs out.

Website: https://www.cipherroom.com.au/
Address: 640 King St, Newtown NSW 2042

Social Escape Rooms, Alexandria

the view of the Eiffel Tower from a puzzle room

If you are looking for a fun and not-so scary escape room to enjoy with family and younger ones, then you have to check out Social Escape Rooms. They offer four fun escape rooms that are designed to be not as challenging as some of the other places on our list, but are still just as rewarding!

As the perfect starting point for beginners, their Paris escape room has you preparing to leave your beautiful Paris hotel room – but you can’t find your plane tickets or passport! As the clock slowly ticks away, you must search your hotel room for any clues so you can checkout and not miss your flight.

If you finish and decide to take it up a notch, then their other escape rooms will have you stepping into the shoes of Sherlock Holmes to solve a murder mystery, working your way through a kidnapper’s demands and bypassing a bank’s security systems for the ultimate payday – which is more challenging than expected.

Website: https://www.socialescape.com.au/
Address: 62 Wyndham St, Alexandria NSW 2015

Expedition Escape Rooms, Redfern

an abandoned tin shack out in the middle of nowhere

With locations in Redfern and Gladesville, Expedition Escape Rooms offers an incredibly unique and difficult escape room experience, so make sure you and your team are confident in your puzzle-solving skills before entering!

Their escape room, The Forgotten Son, takes players on a journey through the rustic Australian outback. Set in an old tin house and centred around a famous Australian folklore character, you and your group are taking shelter inside when suddenly the eerie sounds of a child faintly sobbing can be heard.

Of course, we don’t want to give too much away, but you will have one hour to complete the puzzles, follow the clues and reach the end – if you can. This is one escape room that will require your critical thinking skills to kick into overdrive.

Website: https://www.expeditionsydney.com.au/redfern
Address: 11A Cope St, Redfern NSW 2016

 

Whether teaming up with colleagues and friends or competing to see who is the smartest, escape rooms have continued to provide a fun, immersive, challenging and incredibly enjoyable experience since they first started to become popular in the late 2010s.

Now that you know where to find the best escape rooms in Sydney, grab some mates, put on your Sherlock Holmes cap, and book a session today! If you’re in the mood for a drink afterwards to celebrate your victory, then check out where to find Sydney’s best cocktail bars.