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Escape from the Underwater Puzzle Challenge

Oct 5
3 min read

Time limit: 30+3 minutes

Age limit: Under 12 requires adult

Player limit: 2-4

Difficulty: Hard

Date visited: July 2026


The final game of our Canada-Japan trip brought us back to Scrap's Shibuya venue for Escape from the Underwater Puzzle Challenge. Like many of Scrap's puzzle-based experiences, this one was not a typical escape room and was focused entirely on solving a lot of puzzles in a short period of time. But was it a good experience?


  • Escape from the Underwater Puzzle Challenge was a lot of unexpected fun. It's uneven and all over the place, making it quite a frantic experience full of running around all over the venue. Admittedly, it will be polarising for the reasons set out below, but if you keep your expectations in check, it's definitely not a bad way to spend 33 minutes in Shibuya on a hot summer's day.

  • After checking in, we watched an intro video on how to play the game and were each given an answer sheet and a pencil. There was no room per se in this game — the puzzles were literally strewn all over the walls of the venue, across two floors and even in the stairwell. As such, there was no theming and we had to simply run around, weaving through other people standing and sitting around for other games, trying to find all the puzzles relevant to our game.

  • The solutions to the puzzles are written down on the answer sheet. Every four or five solutions will combine to reveal a code, which you can use to open one of the physical safes in the game and obtain a sticker. The more stickers you can get, the more "bonus time" you will have for the final "mini escape room" at the very end.

  • The gameplay was very frantic. We had 30 minutes to solve 20 puzzles, but a lot of the time was spent just trying to locate the puzzles themselves. Notably, the English puzzles were a different set to the Japanese ones, so technically we could only play half of the game. The highest scores on the leaderboard were all Japanese players who completed all the Japanese puzzles and had enough time to tackle some of the English ones as well.

  • The puzzles were diverse and mostly relied on logic and deduction, and didn't actually require much English knowledge other than being able to read the questions. Some were very easy and the answers were apparent instantly. Others were more complex and difficult, and some were even multi-step or combined puzzles in different areas, so it was useful to take photos on your smartphone to prevent having to run back and forth.

  • At the end of the 30 minutes, we had to head to a designated area and hand over our answer sheets for our GM for score tallying. We were then let into a "mini escape room", which we had to solve within 3 minutes (plus any bonus time accumulated). Luckily, we had played a few of these Japanese escape rooms with tricky/wacky final puzzles by now, so we managed to figure out the solution with only seconds to spare. We ended up getting an "SS" rank with a score of 29, which I think was pretty close to the max for English players


Escape score: 29 points (SS rank!)

Theming

Atmosphere

Puzzles

Creativity

Fun

C

C

A

A

A-

Verdict: A fast-paced, uniquely Japanese game that's all about solving a whole bunch of fun, wacky puzzles in a very short amount of time. Perfect for puzzle nerds who don't need pretty sets or immersion to be satisfied.


OVERALL RANK:

H

Z

J

B+

B+

B+


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