The Lost Mine

Mission Escape - Pitt Street (Sydney, Australia)

Time limit: 80 minutes

Age limit: At least 2 members over 15 (flexible)

Player limit: 2-6

Difficulty: 4.5/5

Awards: Bullseye Award: Honorable Mention - Set Design (2019)

Date visited: January 2025

We finished up The Wizard’s Chamber at Escape This with so much time that we went to get a bubble tea before heading around the corner to do The Lost Mine at Mission Escape. While we enjoyed Mission’s Unstoppable and Dr. M, there’s just something about all-tech rooms that our family has not yet fully embraced. Thus, our expectations for The Lost Mine, one of Mission’s older rooms but also their most difficult at their Pitt Street location, were not super high.

As with other rooms at Mission Escape, we were first given a briefing, with the backstory of the room printed on a laminated piece of paper. It’s actually quite a convoluted story, but essentially, you’re heading into a mysterious mine to look for some purple crystals that might be super valuable. Before even entering the room, we were given a bag of items that might come in handy — something I thought was both good and bad. Good in that it’s an extra challenge having to figure out when and how to use them, but bad in that you have to carry them around and that it didn’t make a whole of lot sense why you’d bring some of these items with you.

Overall, we had a solid time in The Lost Mine. I would say our modest expectations were met but not exceeded by much. On the positive side, this felt like another massive room, with multiple sections and tons of tech-infused puzzles and devices. I also liked that this was quite a challenging room, and we definitely got stumped a couple of times and needed hints. There were several elements and ideas that I thought were really cool, though ironically, most of these were actually mechanical or non-tech. This was also a rare room where we had to make a crucial decision at some point in the game, and the choice we made had an impact on how the game ended. I can imagine these things being very novel and unique when the game first came out in 2017.

On the downside, the room did feel a little dated despite all the hi-tech contraptions. There were a couple of tech puzzles in particular that were very finicky and turned out to be more tedious than fun for us. Some of the tech and the puzzles also felt a bit out of place and didn’t make much sense in the space. And while I liked that the game could be played in both English and Simplified Chinese, having a diary that contained text in both languages as well as subtitles on video screens did impact the immersion.

Lastly, like some of the other Mission rooms we’ve played, there were some minor issues like incorrect text formatting on the briefing card and typos/spelling errors on the props. I know most people probably won’t even notice these things, let alone be bothered by them, but for some reason they just irk me.

Escape time: 70 minutes out of 80

Verdict: A big, hi-tech room with some fancy ideas and is still fun, but also a little dated compared to what the newer next-gen rooms have to offer.

PS: We’ve been told Mission is close to releasing a brand new room at their Pitt Street location! Very interested to see what kind of next-gen room they will create given all the advancements and trends in the industry.

Rating: 8.05

Player	Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun	Average
H	8.5	8.5	7.5	8	8	8.1
Z	8	8.5	7.5	8.5	7.5	8
J	8	8.5	7.5	8.5	8	8.1
C	8.5	8.5	7.5	8	7.5	8
Rating						8.05