The Mad Scientist

Escape Room Geelong (Geelong, Australia)

Time limit: 45 minutes (up to 60 minutes)

Age limit: 18+ (no exceptions)

Player limit: 2-4

Difficulty: Medium

Date visited: October 2025

Our third room of the day took us out into the suburbs of Geelong and my first professional “in-home” escape room. Yes, this one is literally inside a person’s residence. Normally, I would not look to book such a room, but the owner and creator, Andrew, is a professional escape room designer and builder with a decade of experience, and Mad Scientist is actually one of the best-rated games in Geelong on Morty. So how was it?

• Mad Scientist was a professional escape room in every way. Even though we entered through the front door of a suburban house, that fact was forgotten very quickly once we started the game, as the décor, props, and all puzzles were no different to that of one at a commercial establishment.

• The room was much bigger than I expected, equal to or actually larger than a lot of other escape rooms I’ve played across Australia. It also had multiple spaces, though I’m glad the maximum number of players was 4, as having too many would get a little crowded and diminish the experience.

• Some of the props were starting to look a little old and worn, but it added to overall charm of the setup.

• The puzzles were what made this a very good room. Some sections were multi-linear, enabling our team to divide and conquer, while others were best worked on together. The majority of the puzzles were science-related, in line with the mad scientist theme, though there wasn't much of a story.

• This was marketed as a 45-minute room, with up to 60 minutes allowed (the average time was said to be 54 minutes), so it’s suitable for players across a wide range of experience levels.

• We managed to cruise through most of it until the final section, where we were stumped by a particular puzzle for a very long time. We were told that this was intentionally put in as a “road block puzzle” for teams that would have otherwise finished too quickly. I understood this approach conceptually but just wasn’t the biggest fan of it as it had the potential to be frustrating momentum killer.

• As a bonus for completing the room early, we were presented with extra puzzles to solve after we escaped, but unfortunately we were unable to do them as we got carried away chatting with Andrew and it got too close to our next escape room booking!

Escape time: 33 minutes out of 45

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

Verdict: An old but fun and charming in-house escape room that did not feel homemade at all.

RANK: B