Earthrise One (Melbourne, Australia)
Time limit: 60 minutes (flexible)
Age limit: Children under 15 require an adult
Player limit: 2-6 (Recommended 4-5)
Difficulty: Hard
Date visited: September 2024
We had initially only planned to do 3 escape rooms in Melbourne, but I got a last minute tip from Scott of Escape Rooms in Sydney to try the new Earthrise One in Richmond and managed to squeeze in a booking on Saturday night. We were on a high after doing the brilliant Mafia: The Golden Ring at Adventure Rooms on Bourke Street, and I thought it was going to be hard to top that experience just a couple of hours later.
Well, it’s hard for me say which escape room I enjoyed the most in Melbourne because I loved them all so much, but Earthrise One is probably the one that impressed me the most. Its design and production value is out of this world. While Curium’s Extraction is far bigger and likely a lot more expensive, Earthrise One is the more clever and immersive experience. From the moment I entered the mission briefing room, I had a feeling it was going to be special.
From there, Earthrise One lifts you up to the space station with a bit of magic, and you are soon faced with an amazing set that resembles a scene from your favourite sci-fi movie, complete with a full control panel and those thick sliding doors. As members of the crew, you and your team then have to complete a series of practical tasks that one would actually expect on a spaceship, while also investigating a mystery and finding a way to secure the research results at the same time.
There are so many ingenious elements in this room, but unfortunately I can’t talk about them without spoiling the experience. But I will say that every “puzzle” makes perfect sense in the narrative and it never feels like you have to do anything just for the sake of it. Even the way you ask for clues and are given hints aligns with the theme and story.
I will have to say though that Earthrise One comes across as more of an enthusiast room because it’s damn hard and can be confusing at times. I think people with technical, computing or engineering backgrounds will probably fare better because of the nature of the puzzles, which require the type of thinking we hadn’t really utilised in other escape rooms. We ended up really struggling with some of the tasks and asked for help a lot more than any other room we’ve played. You really need to act like an astronaut and read the manuals carefully and think logically under pressure in order to figure out what to do. That said, while I was confused plenty of times, I never found it frustrating and got a big dopamine hit every time we progressed, especially as the time became more pressing. It was the first time that an escape room made me feel like I was in a video game.
After an extremely satisfying ending, we were kindly given a backstage tour by our GM David (one of the core creators), lifting the veil on some of the magic behind the room. It left me so impressed that I went on Kickstarter and became a supporter of their next project, Star Crew.
Earthrise One really deserves to have a much higher community rating on Morty and be booked out every session like some of Melbourne’s most popular rooms. I’ve been telling everyone I know to try it out, and I really hope I will see it on TERPECA lists soon. That’s how special I think it is.
Escape time: Unclear, but we made it out within the 50-70 minute suggested game time.
Rating: 9.05
Player | Theming | Atmosphere | Puzzles | Creativity | Fun | Average |
H | 10 | 9.5 | 8 | 10 | 9.5 | 9.4 |
E | 9.5 | 8 | 6 | 9 | 7.5 | 8 |
Z | 10 | 9.5 | 8.5 | 9 | 8.5 | 9.1 |
J | 10 | 9.5 | 9.5 | 10 | 9.5 | 9.7 |
Rating | 9.05 |
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