The Hunting Lodge

Confinement Escape Rooms - Taupo (Taupo, New Zealand)

Time limit: 60 minutes

Player limit: 2-8

Age limit: Parental discretion advised for children aged 8-13

Difficulty: Standard (4/5), Advanced (5/5)

Date visited: December 2025

When planning our New Zealand escape rooms, I mainly went for enthusiast recommendations or high Morty scores. But we were going to be staying in Taupo anyway, so I thought, "Why not book a game here?"

The one we settled on was The Hunting Lodge at Confinement Escape, which also has a branch in Hamilton. Its reviews were lukewarm at our time of booking, but it's also said to be the most challenging and best room the venue had to offer. We particularly found it interesting that they had a "standard" and "advanced difficulty." Was it worth it?

• The Hunting Lodge definitely came across as more of a commercial escape room than an enthusiast one. That said, we still found it solid overall, with some things better than expected, but with other issues that dampened our overall experience.

• The theme was a crime scene at an AirBnB, and we were investigators (each with a specific job title) tasked with identifying the killer (the "standard" quest) as well as the names of the victims (the "advanced" quest). It's not as complex as it sounds. What this basically means is that if players have time to spare after completing the standard quest (10-15 minutes), they can choose to tackle the advanced quest, which is just a few extra puzzles in the same space.

• On the positive side, we did not expect the room to be so big — there were multiple spaces, the most of any game we had played in New Zealand up to that point. The theming, at least at first glance, was also very solid, with plenty of thematic props and ornaments scattered around the room, fake blood, limbs, etc.

• Upon closer inspection, however, it became apparent that the room was not very well maintained, with many props looking quite worn and dirty, while others that were supposed to be affixed had been forcibly removed and not glued back.

• The walls of the first space also did not go all the way up to the ceiling, making it very noisy as we could hear everything that was happening in neighbouring rooms and the hallway.

• Additionally, I was not the biggest fan of their clue system. We had to carry an iPad around that showed our remaining game time, and if we needed a clue, we would have to scan a QR code typically found next to the puzzle. Thankfully, these were proper clues and did not simply give us the answer.

• This was a challenging but not overly difficult room, though we struggled a lot to get going in the beginning. Having come straight from the 1950s Cold War Codebreaker game, we had become calibrated to tricky, thought-provoking puzzles, and it took us a while recalibrate as we kept overthinking the more standard, cliched puzzles The Hunting Lodge had to offer.

• There were a couple of times when we literally said out loud, "Surely it can't be that simple," but it really was. The problem was that many of the solutions relied on basic but tenuous connections rather than clever puzzle-solving logic in line with the theme.

• The final puzzle of the "standard" difficulty utilised a bit of a cheap trick that arguably required external knowledge. I managed to get it in the end after some initial failures, but I found the solution more obtuse than cheekily smart.

• With around 14 minutes to spare after completing the "standard" difficulty, we decided to tackle the "advanced" puzzles too. I do recall seeing some items in previous spaces of the room with stickers stating that they formed part of the "advanced" puzzles, but we never had to go back to them, so I wonder if they'd actually been scrapped.

• We ended on a sour note because we thought we had completed the "advanced" puzzles and exited the room, only to find our GM chatting to another GM at the front desk, completely unaware that we had finished. As it turned out, we hadn't finished, but that was only because the final mechanism jammed and didn't trigger, even though we had done the right thing.

• That's probably the biggest problem with the QR code clues — it minimises the role of the GM, who is there not just to give clues, but to ensure game flow, recognise malfunctions, or when players are destroying props (intentionally or unintentionally), or even putting themselves ins danger. The GM cost savings absolutely do negatively impact the player experience.

Escape time: Standard: 46 minutes; Advanced: 58 minutes

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

Verdict: Plenty of potential given that it's a large, multi-space room with an intriguing murder mystery at its heart, but unfortunately let down by poor maintenance, mid puzzles, and a lack of GM oversight. It was not bad but could have been so much better.

OVERALL RANK:

H	E	Z	J
B	C	B	B-