Bank Heist

Social Escape Rooms - Alexandria (Sydney, Australia)

Time limit: 60 minutes

Age limit: None

Player limit: 3-8 (recommended 3-5)

Difficulty: Hard (46% success rate)

Awards: TERPECA Nominee (2020-2023), Best of Morty 2023

Date visited: November 2024

Months ago, when I first started researching escape rooms in Sydney, Bank Heist kept popping up as one of the best — and the most difficult. The reason? In addition to the main puzzles in the room, there's also a whole bunch of bonus optional puzzles (like a "side quest"), and if you manage to complete everything within the 60-minute time limit without any hints, you get a $100 cash prize (formerly $500 when the room was first released). Because of this, we were wary of even attempting the room, but after experiencing the awesome Ransom and their magnificent portal game, The First of Them, we decided we were ready for the challenge.

Bank Heist is what exactly what it claims to be: You are a team of bank robbers and your goal is to break into the bank safe and steal a massive diamond. I thought the theming was great — the bank vault was really well made (metallic, heavy, and sturdy), and the use of tech was perfectly in line with the theme. I liked the mix of traditional padlocks and bank-related technological challenges, which were loads of fun. While it's not a particularly big room, it was spacious enough to comfortably fit our team of five (including C), and there was certainly enough stuff to keep everybody busy, even allowing us to split up and tackle different puzzles at the same time.

The main puzzles were definitely challenging, and we managed to get our hands on the diamond in just over 47 minutes, good enough to place us in the top 10% or so in terms of completion time (for a room with a 51% success rate for five-player teams and 46% overall). We actually should have beaten it much sooner, but the kids somehow missed an obvious instruction written down right in front of them and we wasted several precious minutes trying to figure out what to do next! This unfortunately tends to happen to us quite a lot 🤦...

As for the bonus optional puzzles, Social Escape's friendly owner Mark was kind enough to give us a few minutes to try them out. And I now understand why Bank Heist is considered such a difficult room! Some of them are not puzzles per se, but require specific dexterity skills. My kids managed to crack a few while we were chatting with Mark, but it's easy to see why the room is considered nearly impossible to beat 100% the first time, especially if teams don't split up to focus on different puzzles at the same time. By Mark's estimation, the "side quest" potentially requires more time to complete than the main room itself, which is why some teams actually come back to replay the room so they can beat all the optional puzzles. In fact, Mark told us that most of the top record holders and those who have 100% completed the room are second-timers.

Personally, I like additional tasks that allow experienced or expert players to challenge themselves, but I can also see why some players might not like them — either because they might feel these are a distraction from the main puzzles, or that sense of dissatisfaction from not completing everything in the room.

At the end of the day, Bank Heist is a fantastic room, one of the best in Sydney. And it's no surprise that it has been nominated by TERPECA every year from 2020-2023, only to surprisingly miss out this year. For our family, it's even better than Ransom (which did get a 2024 TERPECA nomination).

Escape time: 47 minutes and 7 seconds

Verdict: A well-themed, challenging room that provides loads of hi-tech fun and takes the difficulty to another level with an optional side quest.

Rating: 8.9

Player	Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun	Average
H	8.5	8.5	9	9	9	8.8
E	8	8	9	9	9	8.6
Z	8.5	8.5	9	9	9	8.8
J	9	9	9.5	9.5	10	9.4
C	8	8	9	9	9	8.6
Rating						8.9