Psycho Motel

Escape Rooms New Zealand - Tauranga (Tauranga, New Zealand)

Time limit: 90 minutes

Player limit: 2-8

Difficulty: Hard

Date visited: December 2025

After finishing at Get Out in Te Awamutu, we drove 90 minutes east to Tauranga, where we settled for the night. The next day — Z's 14th birthday — we went to the Tauranga branch of Escape Rooms New Zealand, intending to play The Orphan's Revenge: A Murder Mystery (a personal recommendation of the owner). This was also J's 100th game, so we wanted it to be a good one!

Just before entering the room, however, the owner told us that The Orphan's Revenge is based on a Japanese room... and Z immediately said, "Madame LeClaire?" As it turned out, the owner had played Madame LeClaire and the Seance of Death in Osaka a few years ago (back when it was a temporary room at the St Regis), and loved it so much that he asked Studio Escape if he could create something similar back in New Zealand. They gave him their blessings and he did it!

So, if you only get to play one room at this venue — and haven't visited/won't be visiting Studio Escape in Osaka any time soon — I would highly recommend that you play The Orphan's Revenge, an astonishingly good game. The owner gave us a sneak peek of his version the room and it indeed looked very similar, albeit with a few added puzzles as it's been transformed into a 90-minute game.

Anyway, the owner kindly allowed us to play another game at this venue and we went with Psycho Motel, based on the classic film and TV series, and the one I originally wanted to try before the recommendation. That said, having played the similar themed and unremarkable Motel in Melbourne a few months ago, I was admittedly a little wary. Was it good decision?

• Absolutely! Psycho Motel turned out to be a really solid room with some fairly challenging puzzles. I definitely preferred it to Motel.

• The set design was decent but not extravagant, given the nature of the theme. It had all the things you might expect from a dingy motel, and I was glad there were only a a couple of signs informing players that certain props and objects did not contain any clues.

• We were initially split up and put into different dark rooms, separated by a common wall. The first task of the game was to unlock the door separating us using the power of team work, then figure out a way to switch on the lights.

• It did not feel like there were a lot of puzzles for a 90-minute room, but they were definitely intended to be quite challenging. The flow was largely linear and the challenges typically ended with a code for a padlock, but as these locks were scattered around the room, it was up to us to test which solutions applied to which locks.

• It was the kind of room with several major "roadblock" puzzles, where you could be stuck for a very long time if you fail to spot something important or if the solution simply doesn't click. There were definitely a few "aha" moments in this one.

• We were very fortunate on this day, with our great team work getting us through the initial portion of the game very quickly, J's sharp eyes spotting the key to one of the biggest stumble blocks early in the game, E deftly handling a tricky practical puzzle with efficiency, and Z identifying the solution to another difficult puzzle as he had seen something similar in a Sydney game. This helped us escape in just 41 minutes, an all-time record.

• In all, Psycho Motel was a pretty fun time, but what made it stand out and memorable was its awesome ending. I got a real kick out of it, which in my opinion elevated the experience from good to very good.

Escape time: 41 minutes out of 90 (all-time record!)

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

Verdict: A very solid creepy hotel room with a memorable finale that will especially appeal to fans of Psycho or Bates Motel.

OVERALL RANK:

H	E	Z	J
A-	A-	B+	B+