Furukawa Hospital

BE Escape (Sydney, Australia)

Time limit: 75 minutes

Age limit: 14+

Player limit: 2-8

Difficulty: 4.5/5

Date visited: December 2025

[This review is written by Z, who played this room with 2 friends during the school holidays. We initially had no intention of playing BE Escape, which opened in February 2025, because of its fake 5-star Google reviews and exorbitant pricing, though there now appear to be some genuine positive reviews and pricing has come down significantly to be more comparable to the market.]

As a big horror fan, I was genuinely excited to see how BE Escape would stack up against some of the strongest contenders in the genre, including standout experiences like Intruders and Mr Pepper’s Toy Shop. Furukawa Hospital ended up being the most intense and frightening escape room I’ve done so far, particularly due to its solo missions and frequent live actor chases. However, despite its strong scares, the room falls short in other key areas, particularly puzzle design, set construction, narrative cohesion, and overall flow.

Here’s what I thought:

• This room is not for the faint-hearted. Many tasks required players to separate from the group and enter small rooms or long corridors alone to collect items. Because our team had a couple of people who were easily frightened, the staff toned down the intensity for us. This likely changed how the room normally runs, so our experience may have been less scary than what most players get.

• The room takes place in the abandoned Furukawa Hospital, a location with a history of investigation groups entering and never coming back. Your goal is to uncover what happened to them and figure out what dark secret the hospital is hiding before escaping.

• While the premise is strong, the story was often told through sound recordings, which were played throughout the experience as we solved a puzzle, although the puzzle had no real connection to the story. Even after finishing the room, I had no real idea what the story was about, as the audio recordings were more like snippets of a story rather than a step-by-step narrative.

• The BE Escape website showed a spacious lobby, along with some photos of what to expect in the rooms. However, many of these pictures seemed AI-generated, and the actual lobby felt noticeably smaller and less polished. This would make your arrival a bit underwhelming if you go in expecting the same visuals as the website.

• During our wait in the waiting room before the briefing, one of the staff members openly vaped in front of us. This felt unprofessional and broke the immersion before the room even began. In addition to this, the venue only had one bathroom, and due to one of the staff members taking a long time in there, our game was delayed by a few minutes.

• Instructions and hints were sometimes hard to understand (due to strong accents), and this was confusing before and during the game. We sometimes needed instructions to be repeated as it was hard to comprehend.

• The theming was decent, but it felt like the escape room only consisted of long hallways and rooms decorated with a few hospital props. Because the environment was extremely dark almost the entire time, it’s hard to appreciate whatever detail was actually there. The room included quite a bit of reading, which was difficult to do in the low lighting. On top of all this, some of the instruction manuals felt AI-generated and had typos in them (One of the instruction manuals read ‘Hospitol’ instead of hospital). Instead of feeling like a real hospital, it felt more like walking through dim corridors with random medical items placed around.

• Despite the weaker theming, the atmosphere was one of its stronger points, with eerie music and diegetic noises accompanying the overall darkness, creating a sense of dread and tension where anything could pop out at you at any given point.

• The puzzles were definitely the weakest part of the experience, with several major issues that made it not feel like a traditional escape room. Firstly, the puzzles didn’t actually connect to the story and felt more random than related to an actual hospital mystery. Although it utilised hospital props such as eye charts and medicine bottles, the puzzles didn’t integrate with the story and felt more like tasks. The puzzle solutions and steps were unclear, with some leaps in logic or general knowledge that some players might not have. The puzzle flow was almost non-existent, with no clear indication of what to do next. Our tour guide frequently told us what to do next, breaking the immersion and making us feel more like we were following instructions rather than playing an actual escape room.

Furukawa Hospital was definitely one of the more thrilling horror escape rooms I’ve played in Sydney, particularly with its focus on solo missions, tension-building atmospheres, and high-adrenaline chases. While most typical escape rooms lean toward puzzles and set designs, BE Escape instead leans heavily into suspense, darkness, and psychological pressure. Furukawa Hospital is an experience built more on fear and isolation than on intricate theming or narrative depth. When we played, the room delivered strong ambience through its oppressive lighting and unsettling soundscape, but the puzzle flow, prop quality, and overall cohesion fell short of the potential suggested by its concept.

Escape time: N/A

Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun
B	B+	C	B-	B+

Verdict: Certainly unnerving and thrilling, but ultimately felt uneven, with moments of tension overshadowed by inconsistent design choices and unclear progression.

OVERALL RANK: B-