58 answers about the Escape This escape room studio and factory, grouped by topic.
In short: Every common question about Escape Box, the Escape This escape room studio and factory: the crafts, the hardware and software, the room breakdowns, the factory and the company.
Escape Box is the escape room design studio and escape room factory of Escape This, Australia’s largest escape room operator. Escape This writes, designs, builds, wires, paints and scores its escape room worlds there, at 21 River Road, Bayswater, in Perth, then installs them at its centres in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne.
An escape room factory is a workshop where escape rooms are built rather than played. At Escape Box, the Escape This factory in Bayswater, Perth, sets are built at full size, props are made by hand, puzzles are wired and tested, and scenic artists finish every surface before a world is installed at a centre.
“Total immersion” is the two-word idea behind every Escape This world. At Escape Box it means a world is more than a room with puzzles: the set, the scenic art, the soundscape, the smells, the tech and the special effects all tell the same story, so players feel they are somewhere else for the whole game.
The Escape Box website takes you inside the Escape This escape room factory: the eight crafts that make a world, the hardware and software behind the puzzles, room-by-room breakdowns of fifteen Escape This worlds with their trailers, a stop-by-stop factory tour, pages for escape room operators and prop manufacturers interested in partnering with Escape This, and a fact sheet.
Eight, all employed by Escape This: escape room designers, script writers, puzzle planners, set builders, scenic artists, the props team, puzzle technicians and audio production. They work under one roof at Escape Box in Bayswater, so the people who write a world’s story are down the corridor from the people building it.
Escape This’s own script writers. Working with the escape room designers at Escape Box, they create each world’s premise, its villain or hero and every line its characters speak, and Escape This’s audio production team then records those lines as professional voice-overs.
A puzzle planner at Escape This maps the route a team takes through a world. Escape This puzzles are non-linear, so several run at once and the whole team stays busy, and each one is planned to move the story on rather than interrupt it. Planners work from the designers’ plan and the writers’ story at Escape Box.
Full-size, in the factory. Escape This’s set builders frame each world’s walls, floors, ceilings and hidden doors at Escape Box in Bayswater, leaving room behind the scenes for the wiring and electronics. Scenic artists and the props team finish the set, and then it is installed at the centre where the world will play.
At Escape Box, Escape This’s scenic artists age, paint and texture every surface of a world until it looks real: new timber and board become stone walls, rusted metal, ship’s planking or a century of grime. Their work is why a freshly built Escape This set never looks like it went up last week.
The Escape This props team, led by the Props Master, in the Escape Box workshop. They make and finish the objects players pick up, open and solve, from chests and keys to potions, ledgers and locks, and build them to survive being handled game after game.
Escape This’s audio production team records and mixes each world’s soundtrack, sound effects and professional voice-overs at Escape Box, and sets up the sound system that plays them, so the music and effects come from the right places in the room. Audio system setup and design is part of the puzzle technicians’ trade too.
Escape This’s backstage crew: prop designers and builders, tech and puzzle engineers and the maintenance crew. Their work runs from set concept and construction to circuit board soldering, crafting props and everyday maintenance, and Escape This’s puzzle technicians work on site at the centres as well as in the Escape Box workshop.
Controllers that Escape This’s puzzle technicians build and program themselves. They work on Arduino and Raspberry Pi boards, code in C++ and Python, design and solder their own circuit boards, and connect a world’s puzzles with Cat 5/6 cabling and Ethernet and serial links, in the Escape Box workshop.
Escape This’s own puzzle technicians. Working alongside the Props Master, the set builders and the creative director, they design, build, modify, improve and maintain the electronics behind every puzzle, special effect and piece of theatre in an Escape This world, at Escape Box and on site at the centres.
Through hidden electronics. Escape This’s puzzle technicians wire locks, lights, sensors and sound into each world, so a door can open by itself, a light can change or an object can answer when a team gets something right. The Escape Box breakdowns show examples, such as Captain Nemo’s control panel and Entombed’s glowing ankh.
ER-OS is Escape This’s own booking and game system. It takes every booking for every Escape This world at every centre, records each game as it is played and feeds the live leaderboards on escaper.com.au and the statistics on escapethat.com.au, so the results players see come straight from the games.
From ER-OS. When an Escape This game ends, the game master records in ER-OS whether the team escaped, its time and the clues it used. Those records update the leaderboards on escaper.com.au and the statistics on escapethat.com.au automatically, with no one typing results up by hand.
At Escape This centres that take team photos in ER-OS, the photo is attached to the team’s game straight away and, when the team has agreed to it, appears beside the team’s time on the escaper.com.au leaderboard. A team’s photo only goes on the public board with the team’s say-so.
Fifteen so far: The Wizard’s Chamber, High Noon, Entombed, Hitman, Lost Tomb, The Dunny, Hotel: Murder Mystery, Cannibal, Zombie Apocalypse, Buried Alive, Asylum, Bank Heist, The Institute, Captain Nemo and Pirates. Each Escape Box breakdown shows the room’s set, props and tech in photos, with its Escape This trailer, and links to the room’s own page for tickets and details.
Yes. The Escape Box room breakdowns include each open room’s official Escape This trailer, and the factory tour opens with a short film from inside the Escape This escape room factory in Bayswater. The films play on the page, and none of them gives away a puzzle.
From the inside out. Escape This built Captain Nemo’s Nautilus as a curved brass corridor with riveted bulkheads and portholes glowing blue as if the sea were right outside, and filled its control room with gauges, switches, glowing tubes and a green-lit radio station. Captain Nemo plays at Escape This Perth CBD.
Calico Jack’s ship, below decks. Escape This built Pirates as a lantern-lit hold with rigging and racked oars and a gun deck lined with cannons, then hung Calico Jack’s portrait and left out his leather-bound log. Its brass capstan gears turn and its treasure chest glows red. Pirates plays at Escape This Perth CBD, Sydney CBD and Melbourne CBD.
With stone that isn’t stone and light from nowhere. Escape This built The Wizard’s Chamber as a purple stone sanctum under a vaulted ceiling with a carved throne and a chessboard, filled its shelves with corked potion bottles and made runes glow from inside the walls. It plays at Escape This Perth CBD and Sydney CBD.
Entombed starts in Dr Smith’s lamplit study, all red damask, maps and brass instruments, then opens into a torchlit tomb passage with a gold sarcophagus at its end. Escape This dressed it with a gold and lapis burial mask and canopic jars, and lit a blue ankh and the hieroglyphs. Entombed plays at Escape This Manly and Perth CBD.
Pure Australiana. Escape This built The Dunny as an outback yard at dusk under a red sky, with a corrugated fence, a campfire and a weathered timber dunny lit by a hurricane lamp, then dressed it with a crate, an esky and a hand-painted Beware of Dog sign. The long-drop is built in timber, lid and all. It plays at Escape This Manly and Perth CBD.
Escape This built Cannibal around the Butcher’s dining room: floral wallpaper, a table laid by candlelight and a meat locker door that should stay shut. An evidence board of photos and clippings tells the story, and the lighting turns the room blood red when it counts. Cannibal plays at Escape This Northbridge and Sydney CBD.
Escape This built Asylum as a padded cell lit in cold blue: padded walls and bench, an observation hatch in the door and tube lights overhead. There is a chain and padlock against the padding, a button marked Therapy Transmission, and patient files that only give up their secrets under ultraviolet light. Asylum plays at Escape This Northbridge, Sydney CBD and Melbourne CBD.
Escape This built Buried Alive’s timber coffins for players to lie in, with a blade of light through the gap in the lid, a small hatch in the wall beside it and a numbered keypad set into the coffin itself, while night-vision CCTV watches every move. Buried Alive plays at Escape This Northbridge and Sydney CBD.
A frontier gaol. Escape This built High Noon in timber and adobe, with a lantern-lit cell block, iron bars between the cells and a hangman’s noose on the wall, then pinned up wanted posters and left the Sheriff’s safe within reach of the outlaws. High Noon plays at Escape This Perth CBD.
The lair of Assassins Anonymous, reached by a lift stalled at floor 7½. Escape This built it in brick under blue light, with a subway map of New York, the Employee of the Month plaque, a Lucky Noodle takeaway box and a desk of hundred-dollar bills. Hitman plays at Escape This Perth CBD.
As a temple in sandstone and gold. Escape This’s Lost Tomb has robed guardian statues beside an altar, columns carved with hieroglyphs, a falcon-headed god between candlelit sphinx heads and a gold pharaoh bust that glows in the torchlight. Lost Tomb plays at Escape This Perth CBD.
A grand Paris hotel in 1920. Escape This built a timber-panelled corridor under a crystal chandelier, suite 701 with a gold damask bed and Art Deco sconces, then added a board of suspects joined by string, a revolver in a drawer and a police notice on the door. It plays at Escape This Perth CBD.
An abandoned containment lab. Escape This built Zombie Apocalypse with racks of glowing serum vials, a CCTV screen in a riveted steel housing, a dosage panel with time and quality readouts and a red LED countdown. Zombie Apocalypse plays at Escape This Northbridge, Sydney CBD and Melbourne CBD.
In Art Deco brass and green. Escape This built Bank Heist around a sealed vault door, with rows of numbered brass deposit boxes, a corridor of green lockers, brass bars at the teller’s window, gold bars on a shelf and a red BUSTED! light box on the wall. Bank Heist plays at Escape This Perth CBD.
The Institute is the next Escape This room for Perth CBD, coming soon. Escape This has built it as a ruined ward: a green-lit corridor, rusting lockers, a restraint chair wired with cables, a fuse box with glowing green fuses and a hand-print scanner. A waitlist for launch news is on the Escape This website.
Escape Box is at 21 River Road, Bayswater WA 6053, in Perth, in the same building as the Escape This head office; the phone number is (08) 6118 0286. It is a working workshop rather than a venue, so the Escape This worlds made there are played at the centres in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne.
Escape Box isn’t open to the public: it is Escape This’s working production facility, with sets and props in progress. The factory tour on this site shows the floor stop by stop instead, and every world made there can be played at an Escape This centre in Perth, Sydney or Melbourne.
In six steps, all in-house. Escape This starts with a story, plans the puzzles and game flow, and builds the set full-scale at Escape Box. Scenic artists and the props team dress it, puzzle technicians and audio producers add the tech, sound, light and effects, and the finished world is installed at a centre and run by trained game masters.
Seven stops on the Escape This factory floor: the backstage crew planning a build, the workbench where props are made by hand, a prop on its way through the workshop, the backstage crew, a library set being installed, a stone-wall set getting its scenic finish and the Escape This Production van. It opens with a short film from inside the factory.
On the Escape Box floor now: Accused, President’s Bunker, Aladdin, Wonderland, Area 51, Super Soldier and Dragon’s Dungeon, plus sequels to The Wizard’s Chamber and Buried Alive. The same Escape This team that made the rooms in the Escape Box portfolio is designing and building them.
Escape This. Escape Box is the in-house studio and factory of Escape This, which Bernie and Daniel Janes founded in Perth in 2020. It has grown into Australia’s largest escape room operator, with centres in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne and more than 500,000 players hosted.
No. There is no franchise or licence behind any Escape This world. Escape This sometimes starts from a bought prop set, then its own team at Escape Box crafts it into a world: the set, the scenic art, the soundscapes, the smells, the tech and the special effects.
At Escape This centres: Perth CBD on Hay Street Mall, Northbridge in Perth, Sydney CBD on George Street, Manly Beach in Sydney and Melbourne CBD on Collins Street, with Brisbane and the Gold Coast coming soon. Book at escapethis.com.au; each Escape Box breakdown also links to the room’s own site.
Yes. Escape This, the company behind Escape Box, has won APAC Insider Escape Room Operator of the Year 2026, APAC Insider Best Immersive Experience Provider 2026 and APAC Insider Escape Room Operator of the Year 2025. Those are company awards: the studio and factory are part of how Escape This runs its rooms, alongside its centres and game masters.
Yes. Escape This is Quality Tourism Accredited, the national tourism accreditation for Australian businesses. The worlds made at Escape Box are run at its centres by trained game masters.
Yes, by expression of interest only. Escape This partners with a small number of escape room operators to bring rooms from the Escape Box portfolio to their venues, installed by the operator’s own team or by the Escape Box team. Escape This is highly selective about who it works with.
It can. An Escape This partner can install a room with its own team or have the Escape Box team install it, the same people who build and install the rooms at Escape This’s own centres, when the factory has the time and resources to take the job on.
Escape This considers commissions for original escape room designs from the operators it partners with, designed and built by the Escape Box team. Each one depends on the factory’s available time and resources and on the operator’s profile.
Carefully: Escape This is highly selective. It looks at each operator’s profile, at the exclusion zones that apply to each room design, which can mean a design isn’t available in your area, and at the time and resources the Escape Box factory has free.
Escape This considers different revenue models on a case-by-case basis, ranging from an outright purchase of a room to licensing or a revenue share, worked out with each partner once there is a fit.
Send an expression of interest with the form on the Escape Box For operators page, with your business, your venues and what you have in mind. Escape This reviews each one personally and gets in touch if there’s a fit.
Escape Box partners with prop set and furniture manufacturers to bring the final magic to their sets: the sound, the smells, the lighting, a totally immersive set and the scenic artistry that turn a collection of props into a world players believe in.
Pirates is the example Escape This points to. The Escape Box team took a prop set and made it Calico Jack’s galleon: lantern-lit timber, rigging and cannons, a soundscape, smells and lighting, with scenic artists finishing every surface so the whole room feels like a ship below decks.
Three levels: install, where the Escape Box team installs a manufacturer’s prop set as a finished world; advisory, where it advises on turning a set into an immersive world; and a full build from the manufacturer’s own designs, so those designs can be fulfilled locally in Australia.
Escape This considers different revenue models for each manufacturer partnership, worked out case by case once there is a fit.
Send an expression of interest with the form on the Escape Box For manufacturers page, with your company, what you make and how you’d like to work together. Escape This reviews each one personally and gets in touch if there’s a fit.
Escape This advertises its backstage roles, from prop builders to puzzle technicians, at escapethiscareers.com.au, and welcomes expressions of interest for every role. Send your resume and why you fit the criteria to careers@escapethis.com.au; the factory roles are based at Escape Box in Bayswater, Perth.
Escape This’s Puzzle Technician (Electronics) ad asks for Arduino and Raspberry Pi programming in C++ and Python, confident soldering and a sound knowledge of electronic components. PCB design, Cat 5/6 cabling, Ethernet and serial comms and audio system setup are a plus. The role is based at Escape Box, in the workshop and on site.
Every world the factory makes is playing at an Escape This centre in Perth, Sydney or Melbourne.