Elude Escape Rooms (Galston, Australia)
Time limit: 75 minutes
Age limit: None (at least 2 adults required)
Player limit: 2-6 (recommended 3+)
Difficulty: 5/5
Date visited: October 2024
Every time we go to a reputable escape room establishment, one of the recommendations we always get was Elude up in Galston, which sounds far but is actually just a 45-minute drive from Sydney's CBD. And so we decided to make a day trip out of it during the school holidays, booking two escape rooms in one day.
The first thing you notice about Elude is how clean and well-maintained everything is. Everything, from the parking lot to the reception area to especially the toilets (literally the cleanest I’ve ever seen), is immaculate and provides a sense of comfort. Julia, one of the co-owners, is a super escape room enthusiast herself, having tackled 375 rooms in 14 countries to date. This extensive experience really explains the quality of Elude's rooms and the puzzles, which turned out to be by far the most challenging we’ve done so far.
The first room we tackled was Framed, their most difficult room. It wasn’t my initial intention, but the timing of the slots worked out best this way for our schedule. For this room, which takes place in the office of a crime scene investigator, one of the team members had to start off locked away in a separate cell. Even though the kids wanted to do it, we were told it would be best to choose an adult, and so I volunteered.
Starting solo in a cell definitely made my experience different to the other players. I had no choice but to take the initiative, and find ways to communicate with the rest of the team so I could be freed and join them. J actually pointed to a few things in the cell (through the bars) I hadn’t even noticed, which helped kick things off and get the ball rolling.
In hindsight, choosing their most difficult room right off the bat was a big mistake. For the first time, our typically confident team of four bit off more than we could chew and failed to complete the room! Part of it was taking the challenge too lightly. Having easily cleared other rooms labelled “hard” at other establishments, we felt we would have ample time to complete Framed, especially given 75 minutes instead of 60. This resulted in us failing to engage in the hunt and seek required (at least at the start), and taking too simple of an approach to the puzzles, many of which involved multiple steps. The kids also did a lot of mucking around and playing with certain objects in the room, which not only wasted time but messed up certain things we needed to use when the time came.
Framed is a multilinear room, so the number of locks and puzzles can feel overwhelming if you don’t start taking them down one by one. By the time we started asking for hints — which are conveyed through the TV screen displaying the clock — way too much time had elapsed, and we eventually ran out of time with a good chunk of the room still incomplete and unexplored.
Accordingly, it is rather difficult to review Framed because we didn’t experience all of it. But from what we did do, it was a lot of fun, particularly my initial solo adventure in the locked cell. The props were all of superior quality, and like the rest of the place, very clean and well-maintained. I would say it’s a little lighter on the theming, atmosphere, and immersion, but when it came to the puzzles, Frame was on a different level compared to all the other places we had been to. What I did love was how stickers were placed next to locks to let you know which puzzles they related to, so you don’t waste time trying a certain code or combination on every lock in the room.
My assumption is that we might have been given a bit of extra time to complete the room if we were close to finishing it, but there was no point in doing so because we were so far off. But stay tuned — we might come back and play it again some day. Elude currently has 4 indoor rooms and 2 outdoor rooms, with many more in the works, including a BnB overnight stay room!
Escape time: Failed!
Rating: 9
Player | Theming | Atmosphere | Puzzles | Creativity | Fun | Average |
H | 8.5 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 8.5 | 8.6 |
E | 9 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 8.8 |
Z | 9 | 9 | 9.5 | 9.5 | 9 | 9.2 |
J | 9 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 9.4 |
Rating | 9 |
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