Elude Escape Rooms (Galston, Sydney)
Time limit: 60 minutes
Age limit: None (at least 1 adult required)
Player limit: 2-6 (recommended 2+)
Difficulty: 4/5
Awards: TERPECA Nominee (2021-2023)
Date visited: January 2025
Our first visit to Elude was a humbling experience, as it marked the first time that we failed to escape a room (twice!). While we were super impressed with Framed and Torquay, we probably shouldn’t have started with such difficult rooms.
And so, with over 30 rooms under our belts and more experience, we decided it was time to return to Elude to tackle their two remaining rooms, Perpetual Motion and Yin Yang.
Perpetual Motion is Elude’s oldest room and also marketed as their “easiest” (4 out of 5), something we would discover is a relative term. This time, we also brought my niece C as backup, as we knew we needed all the help we could get.
I really liked the story behind the room, which revolves around the kidnapping of an inventor who created a capacitor that enables cars to run on tap water. The players have an hour to recover the capacitor in order to save his life.
I must admit that Perpetual Motion was nothing like what I had expected. The graphic above was all I had to go on, so I expected some kind of crazy machinery and gadgetry with moving gears. Instead, what we walked into was something else completely!
What followed was a thrilling, nerve-wracking, and brain-draining 60 minutes of challenging puzzles, mostly of the low-tech nature but extremely creative and clever. We thought we were in trouble when the very first puzzle alone had us scratching our heads, but as it turned out, we were actually very far ahead until about midway through, when one particular puzzle had us completely stumped and needing to ask for multiple clues to crack. After this hiccup, we thought we were going to fail again, but fortunately, we breezed through the final section and escaped with just 37 seconds to spare!
Perpetual Motion, like Elude’s other rooms, was a fun and exciting experience. I would say that the theming was solid (on par with Framed), with the centrepiece prop being especially cool. The puzzles largely led to padlocks, which I never have a problem with, especially when they’re as varied and challenging as they were here. The creativity of the puzzle design was off the charts.
One thing we struggled with was that some props and decorations turned out to be irrelevant to the puzzles, which was a little frustrating because we spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how they might be used. Our gamemaster explained to us at the end that they were placed there simply to make the theming more realistic and immersive.
Perpetual Motion was nominated for TERPECA in 2021 and 2022, and it’s easy to see why. The ultimate measure of a room is the amount of fun we had in it, and Perpetual Motion was certainly a lot of fun — and it sure feels a lot better when you escape in the end!
Verdict: A very cool room packed with challenging puzzles and plenty of interesting ideas.
Escape time: 59 minutes, 23 seconds
Rating: 8.3
Player | Theming | Atmosphere | Puzzles | Creativity | Fun | Average |
H | 8 | 7.5 | 9 | 8.5 | 9 | 8.4 |
E | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7.8 |
Z | 9 | 8.5 | 9.5 | 9.5 | 8.5 | 9 |
J | 9 | 8 | 8 | 8.5 | 8 | 8.3 |
C | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8 |
Rating | 8.3 |
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