Atlantis

Escape Mate (Wellington, New Zealand)

Time limit: 60 minutes

Player limit: 4-16 players

Age limit: Recommended 8+

Difficulty: 8.5/10

Awards: TERPECA Nominee (2024)

Date visited: December 2025

For our second Escape Mate room, Atlantis, we travelled south to their Victoria Street location after a visit to the Wellington Botanic Garden and lunch at Flight Coffee Hangar Cafe. This was a very hyped room, given that it has received a lot of glowing reviews from casual players and enthusiasts alike, and was even nominated for a TERPECA in 2024. So did it live up to expectations?

• Atlantis was huge and jam packed with puzzles, most of which were multi-linear. It’s easily the biggest room we played in New Zealand. It’s no wonder that many who have played it recommend larger teams of at least 6 or more, not just to cover the space but also have extra pairs of eyes and ears on hand due to the puzzle density.

• This was also a gorgeous room, with a colour palette that consisted of primarily blue, turquoise, and teal, complemented by other soft colours including pink and light purple.

• We could tell a lot of thought was put into the design of the entire room and its various sections, the first part of which was a shipwreck. The final area of the room was especially well-crafted and contained many elements that wowed us. The hand-drawn, comic book-style aesthetic was very artistic and beautiful to look at.

• There were a lot of puzzles, so we had to divide and conquer for the most part until the various streams of puzzle-solving intersected and brought us back together. The puzzles were spread all throughout the various areas, some large, some small.

• There were traditional puzzles and padlocks but also some mechanical contraptions and of course plenty of tech-infused wizardry. From hunt and seek and observational puzzles to decoding visual and word clues, pattern recognition and sequencing — and of course communication and teamwork — there were so many aspects of puzzle-solving involved.

• The only problem we had was at times not knowing if a particular puzzle had been solved because the solution may have triggered something somewhere else. And because the room was so big and so busy, there were times when we failed to hear or see what had been triggered and had no idea if we had done the right thing or what to do next. This also worked to our disadvantage in reverse at other times, when we thought we had solved something when we hadn’t done it properly. As a result, our GM had to step in a couple of times to steer us back onto the right path.

• On the whole, we loved Atlantis and found it to be one of the highlights of our escape room adventure in New Zealand. While it probably could do with a little more polish in some respects, there’s no denying that it is one of the best games in the north island of New Zealand.

Escape time: 42 minutes and 29 seconds

Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun
A	A-	A	A-	A

Verdict: Big, bold, beautiful, and busy, Atlantis is a fantastic escape room that’s perfect for larger or more experienced teams who enjoy an adventurous challenge. Lots of fun and plenty of awesome moments.

OVERALL RANK:

H	E	Z	J
A	B+	A	A