Run (Supercell 117)

PaniQ Room (Sydney, Australia)

Time limit: 60 minutes

Age limit: None

Player limit: 2-8

Difficulty: 4/5

Date visited: January 2026

We had a few days left in the school holidays, so I decided to take the boys and their cousin C to PaniQ Room at The Rocks in Sydney.

One of the rooms we wanted to do was their old classic, Supercell 117, a traditional prison escape game. However, they happened to have a special, limited-time collaboration with the streaming platform Binge at the time to promote Run, an Aussie TV show about a real-life bank robber. Basically, Supercell 117 was reskinned into Run - a Binge and PaniQ Room Experience, keeping the core of the game intact while adding new decor and extra puzzles. Was our first promotional collab room a good one?

• Run was just okay. I knew Supercell 117 was quite an old room (10+ years), so my expectations were modest at best, but I thought maybe the Run reskin would have really improved the aesthetics. Unfortunately, apart from a few references to the TV series here and there, mostly in the form of photos and newspaper clippings, the room itself still looked and felt quite old and worn. This was a huge shame as I thought they had a golden opportunity to give the room a major upgrade.

• Like Supercell 117, the game split our team into two separate cells. One side was the "recreational" cell, with a chess board and gym equipment, while the other side was the "prisoner" cell with a table and bed. We had to solve various puzzles in our own cell as well as in collaboration with the other cell before coming together to solve the final set of puzzles. Most of the puzzles ended with a code for a number or word lock; I could only recall a couple of tech-based puzzles (and one of them was really a low-tech listening puzzle).

• The clue system was pretty cool. Our GM had eyes and ears on us at all times, and we could simply wave or call our if we needed a clue. The GM could also offer a clue if she felt was needed a nudge in the right direction. The way the clue was delivered was a handwritten piece of paper through a little drop box. This was a flexible and clever idea that played into the storyline of having someone to help us on the inside.

• Another thing I liked about the room was that there was no single fixed method to solve some of the puzzles. A couple of them required practical solutions, and as long as we weren't damaging any props, the GM allowed us to use whatever methods we saw fit.

• However, apart from the somewhat underwhelming theming of the room, Run suffered from a few frustrating issues — though I'm not sure if they were peculiar to Run or also extended to Supercell 117:

  • Most of the puzzles felt quite standard and lacked innovation. There was some hunt and seek, making connections, and using certain props to see/read codes, but none of them stood out as being particularly creative or interesting.

  • There was an imbalance in the player experience as one side of the room clearly had a lot more to do than the other in the beginning. C and I were on the side with less to do, and it felt like we spent a lot of time looking around aimlessly while Z and J solved puzzles on their side. It was only when the cell doors opened and they were able to come over that some of the puzzles on our side could be solved.

  • My biggest issue actually turned out to be some of the props they added as part of the reskin. On our side of the room, there was an entire wall covered with a map of Australia along with various photos, suspect profiles, post-it notes, news clippings, and so forth. I get that it was part of the collab decor and intended to add "immersion", but we must have wasted at least 15-20 minutes looking for clues on that wall every time we got stuck on a puzzle, only to discover at the end that it was completely irrelevant to the gameplay.

• In the end, we managed to free ourselves with sufficient time to tackle the bonus puzzle, and escaped with a wad of cash in hand.

Escape time: 53 minutes out of 60

Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun
B-	B-	B-	B-	B-

Verdict: While still able to deliver some puzzle-solving fun, this was an older room that was starting to show its age both in terms of theming and puzzle design. The Run reskin managed to breathe a bit of new life into the room, but may have also added some unnecessary complications.

OVERALL RANK:

H	Z	J	C
C+	B-	B-	B-