There’s just something so exciting (read: terrifying) about being locked in an escape room, forced to solve your way out. Whether you're looking to amp up date night, for something fun to do on a rainy day or even the next group activity with all of your best code-cracking mates, escape rooms can do no wrong.
Sydney has plenty of escape rooms to sink your teeth into, including rooms with laser beams, rooms dated back to the 1900s, and even challenges with just a 10 per cent success rate.
These are the best escape rooms in Sydney to try your hand (and mind) at.
The Cipher Room
640 King Street, Newtown and 31-35 May Street, St Peters
Race against time, test your mind, teamwork and instincts in The Cipher Room's escape rooms. At the St Peters location there's a room set in dystopian France called La Rébellion, which will see you try to infiltrate a secret bunker and overthrow your country's evil leader.
Over at the Newtown outpost by the Sydney escape room legends, the Marlowe Hotel and Espionage rooms require you to discover secrets set in the early 1900s. But it's The Cabin that’ll have you really creeped out to the core and dying (pun totally intended) to solve the serial killer case.
Difficulty: Medium to hard.
Paniq Room
13 Cambridge Street, The Rocks
Paniq Room serves up six epic escape rooms that'll see you hand-cuffed inside a prison cell, locked inside a house and having to overcome a mysterious magician's tricks, escaping the Mafia, and playing an actual game of Jumanji. We love this one because each room has been so brilliantly thought out.
Difficulty: Medium—perfect for beginners who want to start thinking outside the box.
Scram Escape Rooms
2/119 Wicks Road, Macquarie Park; Level 1/240 Church Street, Parramatta; 48/2 O'Connell Street, Parramatta
Where paranormal becomes normal, Scram Escape Rooms are only for those brave enough to overcome spirits—and murderers. As part of a global puzzle network starting in Budapest, you’ll have to work your way through dozens of elaborate and straight-up confusing puzzles to find your way out.
There are six escape rooms in both Parramatta locations and three in Macquarie Park, so you won't run out of challenges here.
Difficulty: Hard.
Social Escape
62 Wyndham Street, Alexandria
If it’s your first foray into the world of solving puzzles to get you out of a locked room, Social Escape’s Paris Escape room is the one for you. This one has a scare factor of zero, with the mission being focused on finding your passport and plane tickets within the hour so you don’t miss your flight.
If you’re keen to step things up, there are four other escape rooms that boast spookier puzzles like the Baker Street Mystery, which involves a murder mystery, Bank Heist, where you enter the mind of a criminal, and Ransom, where your loved one disappears.
Difficulty: Medium to hard.
Next Level
23 O'Connell Street, Sydney CBD
Next Level is one of the MVPs of escape rooms in Sydney, with five rooms to choose from and 75 minutes to solve each mystery.
The Ex Libris room merges real life with fiction via a whole bunch of literary-based puzzles…so who’s the Hermione Granger in your group? For a more intense escape mission, try to solve the Artefact: a mission centred around an alien object.
Level of difficulty: Extremely hard.
Hijinx Hotel
75 O'Riordan Street, Alexandria
Full disclosure: Hijinx Hotel is not an escape room mecca. Instead, it calls itself "the world's first challenge room hotel". But if you like escape rooms AND a big ol' dose of nostalgia, we reckon you'll love this place.
The concept comes by way of Funlab—AKA the team behind throwback entertainment go-tos Holey Moley, Archie Brothers Cirque Electriq, B. Lucky & Sons, and La Di Darts. Here, it's all about the challenge (not the panic). Think escape room vibes, but less stress-inducing and more like the nostalgic games of your childhood like Floor Is Lava, Pinball, Tetris, and Twister.
Strike Escape Rooms
Various locations
Located inside a number of Strike Bowling venues, once you enter one of Strike's escape rooms, any feeling of comfort and glee normally associated with ten-pin bowling disappears.
With rooms wrapped in cryptic settings like space, artificial intelligence programs, your childhood dreams (oh yes, they went there) and an alien invasion—most rooms here will, unsurprisingly seem completely out of this world.
Difficulty: Medium.
Mission Sydney
Level 2/332-336 Pitt St, Sydney CBD and Level 5/724 George Street, Haymarket
You’ll be spoilt for choice at Mission, Sydney's first mechanical escape room where there are seven themes to have a crack at. Unlike regular escape rooms, these are less about unlocking keys and more about lasers and special effects, which we love. Our favourite room here has to be Trapped, where you play detectives in charge of investigating a lift that malfunctioned and killed two people.
This room is totally immersive, thrilling and interactive, so you’ll only want to have a try after you’ve warmed up to some easier escape room challenges.
Difficulty: Medium to extremely hard.
Labyrinth Escape Rooms
1B Victoria Road, Parramatta
At Labyrinth Escape Rooms, there are six escape rooms to test yourself in, and be warned—you'll need every ounce of logical thinking and skill-based talent you can muster.
All challenges have a strong plot, which makes trying to escape these rooms even more fun. The Insane Asylum challenge is worth a go as you’re accidentally locked up. You’ll start to hear voices but you don’t know until the end if they’re real or whether it’s all in your head. Creepy.
Difficulty: Medium to hard.
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Image credit: Strike Bowling, The Cipher Room, Scram, Next Level, Hijinx Hotel, Strike Bowling