Scapegoats Escape Rooms (Upper Hutt, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-6 Age limit: Under 14s require adult supervision Difficulty: 8/10 Date visited: December 2025 We finished The Cartel and went straight into Unholy Cottage , Scapegoats' highest rated room on Morty. This was a spooky horror room with occult themes, but it's all driven by atmosphere, with no live actors or major jump scares. Here are my thoughts: We enjoyed this one more than The Cartel,

Scapegoats Escape Rooms (Upper Hutt, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-6 Age limit: Under 14s require adult supervision Difficulty: 6/10 Date visited: December 2025 We booked a lot of escape rooms on this New Zealand trip, and the one establishment I knew the least about was Scapegoats in Upper Hutt, about a half-hour drive north of Wellington. At the time I booked, there were hardly any reviews on Morty, and I couldn't find anyone on enthusiast forums who

Confinement Escape Rooms - Taupo (Taupo, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-8 Age limit: Parental discretion advised for children aged 8-13 Difficulty: Standard (4/5), Advanced (5/5) Date visited: December 2025 When planning our New Zealand escape rooms, I mainly went for enthusiast recommendations or high Morty scores. But we were going to be staying in Taupo anyway, so I thought, "Why not book a game here?" The one we settled on was The Hunting Lodge at C

The Locked Room (Taupo, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-4 Difficulty: Hard Date visited: December 2025 When I first started researching New Zealand escape rooms, one game that kept popping up among enthusiast circles was 1950s Cold War Codebreaker at The Locked Room near Taupo, about an hour south of smelly Rotorua. It was not easy to find, as it was situated on a farm where our mobile internet reception (and thus Google Maps) was very patchy. And it's t

Escape Rooms New Zealand - Tauranga (Tauranga, New Zealand) Time limit: 90 minutes Player limit: 2-8 Difficulty: Hard Date visited: December 2025 After finishing at Get Out in Te Awamutu, we drove 90 minutes east to Tauranga, where we settled for the night. The next day — Z's 14th birthday — we went to the Tauranga branch of Escape Rooms New Zealand, intending to play The Orphan's Revenge: A Murder Mystery (a personal recommendation of the owner). This was also J's 100th ga

Get Out Escape Rooms (Te Awamutu, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-7 Difficulty: Challenging Awards: TERPECA Nominee (2025) Date visited: December 2025 This one wasn't initially in our itinerary, but thanks to a major schedule stuff-up by yours truly that was discovered just a few days before departure, we ended up with a free afternoon and an extra escape room to play — which turned out to be Z's 100th game! Wanting to experience as much of New Zealand as

Escapist  (Hamilton, New Zealand) Time limit: 75 minutes Player limit: 2-6 Difficulty: Hard (5/5) Date visited: December 2025 We were very fortunate that the earlier session of Bloodstone Keep was not booked out on this particular morning, so we were able to go straight into it after completing El Dorado . This one had a vampire theme and was considered spooky but not frightening, with darkness and atmosphere but no real scares. Here are my thoughts: The theming was again v

Escapist (Hamilton, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-7 Difficulty: Medium (3/5) Date visited: December 2025 Day 2 in New Zealand saw us start the day with a 90-minute drive south from Auckland to Hamilton, where we visited Escapist, widely touted by enthusiasts as one of the best escape room establishments in New Zealand. The first room we played was El Dorado , in which our team went on a search of our brother, who went missing 5 years ago while searching

Escapade (Auckland, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-6 Difficulty: Medium Date visited: December 2025 We kicked off our New Zealand adventure in Auckland, literally just a couple of hours after disembarking our flight. Due to expected Christmas closures, I had to put together a tight schedule for the first couple of days, meaning we only had one night in Auckland. I didn't want to waste this opportunity, so I asked around for recommendations for ONE room,

New Zealand trip We're finally back from our New Zealand North Island trip that took us from Auckland all the way down to Wellington. It was a fantastic trip that saw plenty of outdoor walks, children's activities, Lord of the Rings stuff, and of course, escape rooms! In all, we ended up doing 19 escape rooms across 10 days , with the busiest day being the one when we played all 5 games at Xcape in Lower Hutt, just north of Wellington. I will be separately reviewing all 19 ga

We're on vacation in New Zealand at the moment, and it was only fitting that we would be inside an escape room when the annual TERPECA results were announced on 20 December 2025 (it was the 21st in New Zealand). I knew it was going to be a close race between Escaparium's Magnifico and Madland's Magic Universe , but in the end, Magnifico ended up going back to back as the No. 1 escape room in the world by a razor thin margin of 0.001268. To put this in context, the gap betwe

BE Escape (Sydney, Australia) Time limit: 75 minutes Age limit: 14+ Player limit: 2-8 Difficulty: 4.5/5 Date visited: December 2025 [This review is written by Z, who played this room with 2 friends during the school holidays. We initially had no intention of playing BE Escape, which opened in February 2025, because of its fake 5-star Google reviews and exorbitant pricing, though there now appear to be some genuine positive reviews and pricing has come down significantly to b

The Cipher Room - St Peters (Sydney, Australia) Time limit: 60 minutes Age limit: Recommended for age 12+ (creepy atmosphere/themes) Player limit: 2-8 (recommended 3-6) Difficulty: 4/5 Date visited: November 2025 It's hard to believe, but the last time we visited The Cipher Room was to play Espionage in October 2024. At the time, we were optimistic we would be back to play Metamorphosis soon-ish, though I always prefer that escape room builders take their time to deliver t

(UPDATED with new numbers after voting closed) I'm excited. When I started my escape room journey in July 2024, I never expected to reach 100 rooms within the next 15 months. Yet here we are! I thought No. 100 was Cabin Cult , but I actually made a mistake with my count, and as it turns out, my 100th room was Motel in Melbourne. D'oh! Nevertheless, hitting the 100-room milestone means I am now an eligible TERPECA voter! I submitted my application a couple of weeks ago and go

Strange World Escape Rooms - Darlinghurst (Sydney, Australia) Time limit: 70 minutes Age limit: Recommended 18+ (jump scares, coarse language); under 17 requires adult Player limit: 2-8 (recommended 4-6) Difficulty: 3/5 Date visited: November 2025 One of our most anticipated new rooms of the year was the new entry by Strange Worlds, which impressed us last year with their first room, Mrs Claws , a fun, campy horror-comedy. For the longest time, we thought the new room would

Escape Games Melbourne (Melbourne, Australia) Time limit: 60 minutes Age limit: Under 16 requires adult Player limit: 2-7 Difficulty: 4.5/5 Date visited: October 2025 We were still amped up after our transcendent experience at Carnivorou s in Geelong the night before, so my friend V and I decided to do one more room in the morning before my return flight to Sydney. As a two-man team, we decided upon Motel at Escape Games Melbourne to take advantage of a Groupon deal that ma

Containaphobia (Geelong, Australia) Time limit: 80 minutes (intended to be played multiple times) Age limit: 18+ Player limit: 3-4 Difficulty: Expert Awards: TERPECA Top Room No. 77 (2025) Date visited: October 2025 Be prepared to run...   Some time over the past year, a legend began to grow about an escape room so wild, so insane, and so terrifying — yet so brilliant — that it had to be played to be believed, probably even multiple times. Countless people cried and gave up

The Mystery Rooms Geelong (Geelong, Australia) Time limit: 60 minutes Age limit: None Player limit: 4-10 Difficulty: 4/5 Date visited: October 2025 This room… this was not my kind of room.   It was bound to happen eventually – my first Indestroom experience. Indestroom is probably the best-known escape room supplier in the industry, offering a wide range of products ranging from escape cubes, portable games and escape room props to entire escape rooms. That Quizy game show I

Escape Room Geelong (Geelong, Australia) Time limit: 45 minutes (up to 60 minutes) Age limit: 18+ (no exceptions) Player limit: 2-4 Difficulty: Medium Date visited: October 2025 Our third room of the day took us out into the suburbs of Geelong and my first professional “in-home” escape room. Yes, this one is literally inside a person’s residence. Normally, I would not look to book such a room, but the owner and creator, Andrew, is a professional escape room designer and buil

Containaphobia (Geelong, Australia) Time limit: 70 minutes Age limit: 15+ (under 18 requires adult) Player limit: 2-5 (3-5 on Friday, Saturday, Sunday & Public Holidays) Difficulty: Hard Awards: TERPECA Nominee (2021-2024), Best of Morty (2023) Date visited: October 2025 After our first room in Queenscliff, we immediately headed to Containaphobia to play Mayhem Manor  as a team of 3 (as one team member is horror-averse). Situated in a massive barn in the Geelong suburb of Mo