Magician's Lair

Elude Escape Rooms (Galston, Sydney)

Time limit: 60 minutes

Age limit: None (adult required)

Player limit: 2-6

Difficulty: 4.5/5

Date visited: April 2025

After enjoying Elude's outdoor game Stumped and a ridiculously slow lunch nearby, we rushed back to play the new headliner, Magician's Lair. With a difficulty rating of 4.5/5, this was Elude's third-hardest game behind Framed and Yin Yang, and tied with Torquay. But with my niece C added to the team and 100+ additional rooms under our belts since the last time we were here, we felt ready for the challenge. Did we succeed?

• True to form, Magician's Lair was a fantastic experience, full of difficult puzzles that stretched our team's abilities to the limit. Purely from a puzzle perspective, this was one of the best and toughest rooms we've done in Australia. It's another wonderful addition to Elude's stellar lineup of puzzle-dense and highly challenging rooms.

• Those expecting immersive storytelling and theming are unlikely to be impressed. Magician's Lair is essentially a single-room game, but don't let that put you off. As soon as you step in, you will see magic-related props and puzzles packed across every wall in the room, and even in the spaces in the middle. As this was a relatively new room when we played it, everything looked immaculate and well-maintained.

• The room has a very cool concept where you have to slide something along a track that runs all the way around the room, and each puzzle you solve unlocks an obstacle blocking the track. As such, it's a semi-multilinear room in that you can solve puzzles further down the track first, but you'll eventually need to solve everything in order to reach the end.

• As with all of Elude's games, the true star of Magician's Lair is the puzzles. There were just so many different types of puzzles and so many to solve. Observation and attention to detail were key, but we also needed to apply a lot of logic, mathematical concepts, and even tactile dexterity to crack the wide assortment puzzles.

• The difficulty is no joke. Elude is definitely geared towards more experienced players, and they really like to give customers their money's worth. It's no surprise that the vast majority of teams fail, even with unlimited hints. Unless you are highly experienced and have some familiarity of Elude's puzzle design, I would recommend bringing a team of at least 4 players, preferably 5 or 6.

• Lucky for us, we were well prepared and on our A game that day. With 5 players — often splitting up into smaller groups to divide and conquer — we somehow managed to "complete" the room with over 18 minutes to spare, putting us in 2nd place on the all-time leaderboard. However, let me just say that if you manage to get through the room as quickly as we did, there might very well be a "surprise" waiting for you. Unfortunately, I can't give away anything more than that, but I can assure you it makes the room an even better and far more challenging experience 😉.

Escape time: 41 minutes and 35 seconds

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

Verdict: Jam packed with challenging and varied brain teasers that revolve around the magic theme, Magician's Lair is true paradise for those who enjoy puzzle-centric escape rooms.

OVERALL RANK:

H	E	Z	J	C
A-	A-	A	A	A