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Time Hotel (Lift)

3 days ago
3 min read

PaniQ Room (Sydney, Australia)

Time limit: 60 minutes

Age limit: 2 players must be 16+ (flexible)

Player limit: 3-9

Difficulty: 4/5

Date visited: January 2026

After completing Run (Supercell 117), we had a brief break before heading back to PaniQ Room to play our second room of the day, Time Hotel (Lift). I thought it had an interesting premise: Your grandfather owned a 1940s hotel that burned down with hidden gold inside, and now you have a chance to travel back in time to retrieve the treasure in under 60 minutes before you end up engulfed in flames.

This was apparently their newest full-time room that's not an Indestroom creation. I thought the tech was impressive and the aged decor played into the vintage 1940s theme. I think 4 players was perfect, and I certainly would not recommend any more than 6. Given the small spaces, a max capacity of 9 players is ridiculous.
Personally, I enjoyed Time Hotel a lot more than Run. It had better theming, atmosphere, puzzles, more spaces, and more creatively and polish. There was also definitely a stronger narrative vibe, with a coherent story that threads its way through the gameplay, and even had a few twists and surprises.
First off, the set was nicely done to look like a vintage 1940s hotel. The inside of the lift, in particular, looked really cool. Not every prop made sense in the space but it was good enough.
As with Run (Supercell 117), our team of 4 was once again split up. This time, we did it a little differently, with me and J heading into the lift and Z and C starting off outside in the hotel area. I don't mind escape rooms that emphasise teamwork, but as a completionist I'm not a huge fan of missing out on about a third of the puzzles (the whole team works on the final third together).
The puzzles were varied and tested a range of skills. There were a couple of padlocks but most of the puzzles were tech-based. While the signposting was fine, the instructions/explanations could have been a little better, as there we were confused by a couple of things that weren't very intuitive and it wasn't clear what we had to do or how to do them.
I did get a quick run-through of the puzzles Z and C did on their side of the room, but I can't say I know too much about them. As for J and I, we had to solve a series of puzzles in the tiny lift at the very start, and I thought they were very well designed. There was a rotary phone in the lift, which I believed was supposed to be used to communicate with the players outside, but I don't think it was working and we ended up just yelling to each other through the door.
Unfortunately, the intercom was also not working properly on this day (we were warned in advance) and the GM's voice kept dropping out when we needed clarification.
Despite these issues, we found the room quite fun overall. Given that Supercell 117 is over a decade old and most of PaniQ's other rooms are either almost just as old or were purchased from Indestroom, I think it's safe to say Time Hotel is their best game.