Many escape rooms in Melbourne contend to be the scariest, but if you ask anyone on the Time Out team, they're likely to point you in the direction of the Rush Escape Game franchise. Our team has bravely trialled the Hawthorn location's ultra-gory Saw-inspired room and the South Yarra location's unsettling Its Nightmare room, successfully escaping from both — albeit with some emotional damage.
At Time Out, we're tasked with finding the best our city has to offer and while that often involves a lot of eating and drinking (tough, we know), it sometimes requires letting ourselves get scared out of our wits. We do it for our beloved readers, so when we caught wind that the Rush team was opening a third location in St Kilda, we took a deep breath and prepared for the horrors in store.
In Evil Residents, you and your friends wind up blindfolded and chained to a metal pole in a pitch-black basement. When you manage to find a source of light, you realise that you're not alone; the room is filled with the rotting corpses of previous captives. You've been captured by the Faker family, who intend to turn you and your friends into a tasty meal — and you have 60 minutes to either escape or end up on the plate.
You and your mates will need to search this blood-splattered and claustrophobic room for a way out, turning over carcasses and decoding a cryptic journal. Jump scares abound, with members of the Faker family rattling doorknobs periodically to ensure you're still in your rightful place before they're ready for their feast. Once you've managed to free yourselves from your chains and escape from the basement (this took us longer than we'd care to admit), you'll wind up in the family's living room, one step closer to freedom.
There are plenty of puzzles to keep every member of your group occupied, but be wary of wasting too much time on any one problem. The Faker family knew you'd try to escape, so they've left a few red herrings out to throw a spanner in the works.
Outcome: Success!
Atmosphere: 5/5
Creativity of puzzles: 3/5
Difficulty: 4/5
Fun: 5/5
Best quote: "...Can we take these handcuffs home?"
Our tip: Don't be afraid to ask for clues; wouldn't you rather ask for some help than wind up as dinner for a family of cannibals?
If the mention of blindfolds and handcuffs (and not the fun kind) is enough to turn you off, we'd recommend checking out the Alice in Darkness room. Entering a door marked the "Insane Asylum" is still enough to put you on edge, but the promise of no live actors or too many jump scares is welcome reassurance for those who still want to be able to sleep that night. The Alice escape game takes you and your group through a series of rooms filled with puzzles and padlocks, rhymes and riddles, all centred around an Alice in Wonderland theme.
Along the way, you'll encounter a Mad Hatter's tea party, tiny doors, psychedelic murals, mini bottles of potions and pocket watches. While the puzzles are tricky and certainly require concentration and teamwork, the super supportive and enthusiastic staff are always just a walkie-talkie away ready to provide a clue – cryptic enough to still require you to think – but helpful enough to relieve any growing frustrations. Making it out before the time expired was so gratifying, it made us want to try another room almost immediately.
