Da Vinci Down Under

*disclaimer* there are no ninja turtles in this room A revival of sorts from Rush, Da Vinci is a revamped version of a room that once existed in their South Yarra venue. I will admit this had me a little nervous but I was pleasantly surprised by this room! The puzzles were tricky and felt like they would never stop. For a one room experience it was just packed full of stuff to complete. A big focus on attention to detail which was fun in parts but also led to some frustrating moments. Some pretty evil solves/hidden objects that could probably use some adjustments given the success rate was 0% prior to our game. For a room with so much to keep track of there is upsettingly little bench space to work with/store props. This lead to it being a bit tedious in parts having to remove the clutter in order to solve something. I don’t really know what we completed story wise but it can be challenging to convey narrative in a single room escape. A difficult room that could use some slight quality of life improvements but still a good time.

I was told beforehand that Da Vinci Down Under is a reboot of one of Rush's first ever escape rooms, brought back from the dead with a vengeance! After playing through, I was actually pleasantly surprised by this room, usually when a room is marketed as a 5/5 for difficulty it's pretty relative to the other experiences available in the venue, but my god this one gave us a run for our money. Packed to the brim with classic puzzles and hidden props there was an overwhelming amount of content to sift through in this one-room escape. The biggest pitfall for my boy Da VInci however was the puzzle flow, with locks, symbols and notes galore it quickly became a slog figuring out where to start and which pieces of the mountain of content were relevant. While I do love a challenge unfortunately not all of the puzzles felt super intuitive which constantly brought my team of 4 to a grinding halt. Shame. Definitely worth checking out if you're a fellow enthusiast and wanna test your abiltiies; we ended up escaping in just under 50 minutes with no clues. Your move xx