El Dorado

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 for the legendary Lost City of Gold. So, how was it?

• This was a brilliant room, probably the best ancient civilisation room we had played to date.

• First of all, the theming was immaculate. The decor — which we were told they built themselves — stretched from floor to ceiling, ensuring total immersion in the space. There was an artistic slant to the set design, with slightly less emphasis on realism and more on pleasing aesthetics. The walls, symbols, and various props were all beautifully crafted, and the attention to detail was also reflected in the gorgeous colour scheme.

• A lot of thought was clearly also put into the puzzles, which aligned with the theme perfectly. There was some hunt and seek involved, but many of the puzzles required us to decipher symbols and sequences without the need for language. There were no out-of-place padlocks or electronic keypads in sight.

• Some of the physical aspects of the room/puzzles were also very cool, likely inspired by stuff you might see in an adventure film or video game.

• There's really nothing negative to report, except that I wished the room had more spaces and more puzzles. We ended up finishing in well under half the time, and that was with us being stuck on the final puzzle for much longer than necessary as it did not trigger despite the correct input due to a slight technical glitch.

Escape time: 27 minutes and 17 seconds (5th place on all-time leaderboard)

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

Verdict: A very strong room with aesthetic theming and well-designed puzzles that match the lost ancient city theme.

OVERALL RANK:

H	E	Z	J
A-	B+	A-	A-