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Portal

H
5 days ago
3 min read

Scarborough Fair Escape Rooms (Sydney, Australia)

Time limit: 70 minutes

Age limit: None

Player limit: 3-8 (5+ recommended)

Difficulty: 4/5 (we thought it was way harder)

Date visited: October 2025

After our record-setting time escaping 10:79 at Rigatoni Tower, we decided to tackle Scarborough Fair’s latest game, Portal, said to be their NEW hardest room. As the room only opened a week or two ago, we did feel a little like play testers, but we were riding high and ready to smash this 70-minute room.

How did we go?

Not too good. Our team of 3 soon came crashing down to earth, failing to complete Portal within the time limit. In fact, I don’t think we came all that close, even with a handful of hints towards the end.
The backstory is that scientists have unwittingly opened a portal to another dimension with hostile inhabitants, and your team must close the portal before they take over Earth.
The set design of Portal was quite bare, but I suppose it did match the “laboratory” setting. After a small initial space, the game opened up to a large area with multiple doors and the eponymous “portal” device. Inside each of the doors was an object you need to close the portal. It’s a great idea and a fantastic concept, even if it did not make a whole lot of sense.
For us, it was a disaster from the start. We wasted a whole bunch of time in the initial space on a fairly simple puzzle, albeit one that required a bit of outside knowledge. It didn’t take us long to get the solution, but we didn’t execute it correctly, especially as we were confused by a mechanism that was not working as intended. To make things worse, we had no walkie talkie and there was no intercom in that space, so even when our GM tried to help us, all we could hear was muffled sounds coming from the room inside.
Our biggest problem was that the clues and signposting were rather vague or offered tenuous connections, so we often struggled with knowing where to start and what to do next. A couple of minor errors in the puzzles didn’t help either.
Even when we got into a door, the puzzles inside might not be able to be solved until we opened additional doors and combined the clues. The constant cross-referencing between rooms became very confusing.
Even when we asked for hints or after the game when we went through some of the puzzles, many solutions felt like they required a slight leap in logic or thinking waaaay outside the box because they were missing one or two pointers in the right direction. I was surprised there was even a puzzle near the end that relied on guess and check.
Having only 3 people, the minimum required, was also a major disadvantage. This was a multilinear room, so we all split up and tried to solve different puzzles at the same time. But as some could not be solved until others were, we were constantly hitting road blocks. Having an extra pair of eyes and someone to bounce ideas off would have been really helpful. This was one of the rare rooms where I wouldn’t have minded the maximum capacity of 8 players.
We loved that Paul, the friendly owner of Scarborough Fair, wanted to make this a really hard room. But we also felt that there were probably too many multi-step puzzles and too little signposting or guidance. They were the type of puzzles that probably seem logical and intuitive if you created them or know the solution, but not for players going in blind.
Consequently, our ranking for this room does not feel final. Portal has so much potential and would be a fantastic room for larger groups who love a challenge. At the time we played it, however, it just wasn’t quite there yet. Apart from improvements in theming for added immersion, the puzzles and signposting could do with some refinement and streamlining for a more enjoyable experience while remaining as challenging as it is intended to be. We look forward to seeing the changes implemented when we visit Scarborough Fair next time.