Mission Escape - George Street (Sydney, Australia)
Time limit: 80 minutes
Age limit: Suitable for 15+ (at least 2 players 15+ required)
Player limit: 2-6 (recommended 2-4)
Difficulty: 4.5/5
Awards: TERPECA Nominee (2020-2021, 2023), TERPECA Finalist (2022), Best of Morty 2023
Date visited: August 2024
When enthusiasts talk about the best escape rooms in Sydney, the rooms at Mission Escape always pop up near the top of the list. Known for their hi-tech, no padlock approach, Mission is especially famous for their newer rooms at their George Street location. Their best-rated rooms are actually their horror ones, Intruders and The Sacrifice, which have live actors and aren’t suitable for younger kids, so we went with their best-rated non-horror room, Unstoppable.
Supposedly inspired by the Denzel and Chris Pine movie of the same name, Unstoppable is a rare Aussie-themed room in which you and your team are tasked with tracking down a terrorist who plans to set off a virus-laced bomb. And true to the concept, it is a highly nerve-racking room with lots of twists and turns to keep you on your toes and your adrenaline pumping. It will likely have you literally sweating by the end of it, as it did with me.
The best part of Unstoppable is the theming. The designers managed to adeptly capture the feel of a Sydney train station and carriage, giving players the sense that they really are on a shitty and extremely unreliable train system (lol) in a race against time. The sets and props are realistic enough to keep you immersed, making the tension and atmosphere come across as genuine.
The hi-tech puzzles are varied and pretty interesting for the most part, though they lean more “task based” as opposed to traditional escape room brain teasers. There is some hunt and seek involved, though many still require logical thinking and deduction, albeit more akin to the type my kids have to utilise in their thinking skills tests. And while most of the puzzles are in line with the theme, there are a couple of more abstract ones that don’t make much sense in the space or flow.
For Unstoppable, Mission uses a walkie-talkie system for the GM to communicate with you, which I guess aligns with the theme of us being government agents. However, there is also an iPad that you have to interact with to receive clues and to type in certain prompts, which I found to be somewhat hit and miss due to the rigid way it is programmed.
My main problems with Unstoppable are things that can be fixed with a few tweaks. For instance, the English in some of the materials is not perfect and has grammatical errors; the background music was too loud at times to hear key clues; the iPad requires you to close previous photos or videos before you can see the next message pop up; and there was one particular puzzle where the poor lighting made it very frustrating to solve. In the grand scheme of things, these are minor issues that are far outweighed by all the positives, yet they do show how attention to such details do make a difference.
Overall, we still found Unstoppable to be a very exciting and unique experience. We would definitely recommend it for players who enjoy fast-paced escape rooms and prefer hi-tech to traditional padlocks — or just something a little different.
Escape time: 80 minutes out of 80 (escaped just as the clock ticked down to zero)
Rating: 8.15
Player | Theming | Atmosphere | Puzzles | Creativity | Fun | Average |
H | 9 | 8 | 7.5 | 8.5 | 8.5 | 8.3 |
E | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
Z | 7.5 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8.1 |
J | 8 | 10 | 9.5 | 9 | 9.5 | 9.2 |
Rating | 8.15 |
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