Prison Island

Scram Escape Rooms - Penrith (Sydney, Australia)

Time limit: 60 minutes

Age limit: None

Player limit: 2-4 per team

Difficulty: Variable

Date visited: October 2025

Prison Island is listed as an escape room on platforms such as Morty because it has puzzles to solve, but it is definitely not your traditional escape room. The “prison” has 30 cells, each containing a different game. Think of it as 30 mini escape rooms. You get a card, which you swipe to unlock the cell. If it is occupied, look for another one. Depending on how well you perform in the cell, you can earn points (the maximum number of points is specified next to the cell door). You can re-do a cell, but only your max score will count. In teams of up to 4 people, you try to score as many points as you can in 60 minutes. Kapish?

The game is available in several locations in Australia and around the world, and I would describe it as more of a fast-paced party activity that’s a big step up from Hijinx Hotel has to offer. But was it worth it?

• The facility in Penrith is enormous, and our GM told us to familiarise ourselves with the layout before we began so we wouldn’t waste time re-treading the same territory.

• Not much to say about the theming. It was literally just a whole bunch of doors, and different games inside. Nothing extravagant or aesthetically pleasing, but not cheap-looking or bare either. I think it helped that the venue was relatively new and clean.

• The various cell games only had names but no instructions, so we had to figure things out for ourselves once we were inside. There was such a huge variety of games, including tactical and tech puzzles you might see in an escape room, but it felt like a significant portion of them were physical — crawling, climbing, kicking, throwing, etc. They were definitely skewed towards the younger demographic.

• Some games were quite fun and challenging, others were rather lame. A few we failed (even multiple times) without even knowing what the aim of the game was. A handful we attempted multiple times after figuring out what to do and believing we could get the max score.

• The optimal team number is 3, as that is the max number of players for most of the games. As a team of four, E often just stayed outside or to the side because there was nothing for her to do.

• We picked the earliest morning session on a weekday to avoid the crowd. As a result, we were very lucky and had the entire 60-minute session to ourselves (we saw another group entering as we were exiting). This meant we could do every cell we wanted, whenever we wanted, and as many times as we wanted. In the end, we did 28 out of 30 cells, and only didn’t do every single one because 2 of them didn’t appeal to us.

• Our GM said on busy days, there would be around 80 people in there at the same time (max capacity is 120 people). I’d imagine the experience would be entirely different if we had to keep looking for unoccupied rooms and wait around for other teams to finish.

  
  

Escape time: N/A

Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun
B	C	B	B+	B

Verdict: Enjoyment of Prison Island depends on a variety of factors, such as the number of people in your team, their respective ages, your physical fitness level, and how many other people are playing at the same time. Even with optimal conditions, our family still found it to be a giant mixed bag. We’re glad we at least tried it, but probably won’t be playing it again.

OVERALL RANK:

H	E	Z	J
B-	C	B	B+