Escape Hamilton

Wait, what's that??? In the woods??? Down by that creepy old cabin... could it be... ANOTHER ESCAPE ROOM???

There's nothing more terrifying that Jim and Kirsty continuing to break the premises they set up for each season, so they go back to Aotearoa for another visit to Xcape. Find out what this all has to do with uni asssignments, turning the middle side topwise, and floppy, floppy prongs.

Mount thy steed and don thine armour as we head to the majestic world of Camelot! We're joined by Maddie Parker (and later by John) for a medieval room at Expedition in Sydney. Along the way we discuss suggestive duelling positions, disposing of bodies, pendulous sword mounts, and what rhyming is.

It's time to get out your invisible ink, because this week we're returning to... wait, where did I leave that invisible ink? It must be around here somewhere... this is exactly why I try and leave it in the same spot, because otherwise I... Oh never mind. We're doing spy things! Find out why the Espionage room at Cipher Room in Sydney is a pivotal moment for Jim and Kirsty (but don't grill us too closely on it), and marvel at our abilities when it comes to counting to four. We'd be fantastic spies, promise.

For our second episode in our season of escape rooms in Sydney, we go to a room in... Melbourne! Truly excellent commitment to a theme.

We visit the Melbourne branch of Escape Hunt to do a room all about WW2 spying, and necessarily discuss our feelings on the Grease Megamix.

Season 3 begins by resolving one of the biggest mysteries from Season 2. We find the new Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo. We perform a factory reset. We tackle everyday sexism and get introduced to a big group of people at a party. AND we dive into the criminal underworld of Sydney's past.

New Episode. New City. New Country. New News. One old escape room to talk about!

Happy New Year! We kick off our third year of podcasting with a party, featuring three brilliant friends. Matt, Jen and Emma joined us for three sessions of Escape Room / Immersive Theatre / Augmented Reality Game / Puzzle Hunts called Isklander over several weeks in late 2021, and we reconvened at the start of this year to talk about it all. 

We are indoor people now. Our lockdown here in Hamilton has continued, so we have brought the escape room into our house, in the form of the jigsaw puzzle game Secret of the Scientist! In this episode, learn the variety of different ways of pronouncing 'corpse', have your cardboard-based ASMR set off, and hear our exciting and catchy new jingle!

What better way to round off our second Halloween season than by being handcuffed and chained up in the freezer of an axe-murdering chef? I don't even know if that's a rhetorical question. We go back to Rotofobia in Rotorua to tackle a slasher horror and to investigate a crucial mystery: #WHEREARETHEEYEBALLS?

Content note: There is some discussion of cannibalism in this episode

We were solving cryptic questions in a cocktail baaarrrr! Well, we did it a few weeks back when we recorded this episode. And then we went into a lockdown. So enjoy the youthful, playful flavour of two people who had been outside for fun to go to a place with other people. Enjoy the booth booth booth booth booth, the sassy cop, and the 51-piece puzzle from hell.

Halloween season has returned... from THE GRAVE! That's right, it's the most wonderful time of the year, featuring hauntings, frights, horrors, and your two favourite thots (That Halloween-escape-room-podcaster Over There).

We start with Escapist's new witchy room Tabby Lane. Can we save our cat? Is Agatha our aunt? What's that in the top right corner of the post-it note? Will we ever get more biscotti?

"Do you expect us to talk about something that isn't an escape room?"
"No, I expect you to die."

That's right, we're doing a videogame! Agent A is a delightful new(-ish) creation from studio Yak & Co that blends both videogame and escape room alike. We play a spy at the top of his game (not necessarily at the top of ours) trying to escape the top-secret bunker of a rival agent. It's all good clean fun.

Note: This episode features a BRAND NEW SEGMENT!

There's been a MURDER! Was it Royal? No! It was Royale!

It's been a few weeks since last had the chance to do an escape room together, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy. We take a moment to sit down and fill each other in on what we've been doing, in Wellington and... Hinterland? Wait, is that possible? Our hard-hitting interviews cover the dangers of clipboards, hills, and the ineffable legacy of the movie TRON.

Are we John Denver? Because we're Flying On A Jet Plane, baby! Sort of. This week Jim and Kirsty put the 'Nyoom' into 'Nyoom List' by doing the plane-themed room Airforced at Trapd in Matamata. This marks the first time Jim and Kirsty have finished all the rooms at a company outside of Kirikiriroa Hamilton, and to celebrate, this episode contains discussions of The Great Muppet Caper, smack bars, a Selkie's chains of water, teaching children to swear, and the Stump Hill Gang Cinematic Universe.

After a brief hiatus, Season 2 continues by returning to a room from Season 1! The team at Confinement have revised, refreshed and retackled their murder mystery room Murdoch Manor, and we were thrilled to have a chance to see what they've done with the place. But most importantly, this episode marks our entry into competitive food eating. No, really.

Yeeee-haw! Well howdy there folks, won't you gather round while Jim and Kirsty tell you the tale of how they escaped the clutches of the wiley ol' sheriff who was tryna lock them up in the town's saloon? They have a good ol' fashioned chinwag about callie bawlies, Finnish swears, and make a grand promise about a lump of cordite.

Our adventures around the North Island continue, as we make our way down to Wellington and immediately get stuck in a temple thanks to Gareth (or whatever his name is). Fortunately, we were there with our good friend Matt Powell who joins us for this episode! Featuring all the gods, ASMR hints, and bleeped-out spoilers aplenty.

It's time for SEASON TWO! No more summer holidays! And to demonstrate that we're no longer on summer holidays, we do a summer holiday themed room, tackling the Kiwiana-drenched seaside getaway of the enigmatic (and espionagic?) Nana Jan. 

We are joined, high in the clouds of cyberspace while simultaneously deep in the mysterious tomb of a Pharaoh whose name is remembered by nobody, by our dear friend Sophia Halpin for another online escape room! This episode contains discussions of brand new inventions, the scorpion pit art project and our love of bisexual icons.

It's 2021 and it's time to SCAVENGE! For our penultimate mid-season episode we're taking to the streets of Hamilton once more to complete another scavenger hunt, this one set by the good people at Confinement (on one of the floors of SkyCity casino). Featuring discussions of Asterisk The Gaul, An Unnamed Cult Film, and Wanxiety.

You've heard of escape rooms, but what about an escape... HOUSE??? As an end-of-year treat Jim and Kirsty head to a historic house for an evening involving canapes, a murder mystery, puzzles, and unnecessarily crude anagrams.

To mark the end of Season One of Escape Hamilton, Jim and Kirsty present a gala of the highest acclaim: The Prestigious and Totally Objective Awards For Achivements In Hamiltonian Escape Room Making. We encapsulate the highlights of what we've seen in our first season, and reward that which we enjoyed. So grab an incredibly expensive ballgown, put down some red carpet, and prepare for our rigorously thought-out opinions!

The year? 1997. Our job? Ghost hunters? Our age? Completely inappropriate for our job. In an episode of firsts, we discuss the virtual room Red Hill Asylum from the folks at Escapist, AND we're joined by our first ever guests, Bill and Dani from Escape This Podcast. We learn about exam conditions, the various shades of goo, and why you should think twice before deciding to be a dog.

Content note: This episode contains discussions of mental health, suicide, and horror.

Well well, what have we here? Next week's episode is going to be a discussion of the online Red Hill Asylum room from Escapist. And to give you all the lowdown on what the room is like, our friends over at Escape This Podcast have kindly let us share the recording of them playing the room. We'll be back next week to give you our thoughts as usual.

Content note: This episode contains discussions of mental health, suicide, along with descriptions of monsters and remains.

In this unprecedentedly late episode, an unexpected trip to Christchurch lets us try a completely different style of escape room, one that sends us... Into The Dark! No really, we had to wear blindfolds and everything. But a knock at the door could send everything into disarray...

It's time for crime... AGAIN! Escapist have remixed and reopened their Hei$t, so we re-donned our thieving attire and took another mission from (our arch nemesis) Cousin Nicky. This episode features discussions of Bruce Willis' stink lines, the impossibility of snack-buying and Jim makes one of the most upsetting noises ever heard on the show.

To end the Halloween season, the prophecy insists that we must return... to the beginning. Over-Throne at Lilliputt Fun Zone Escape Rooms at Centre Place was the very first escape room that we did in Hamilton, and the thing that inspired us to start a podcast in the first place. So now we return to it, to revisit all the different components of this room: the ones that lit us up inside, and the ones that left us feeling cold. In many ways this room is a song... of ice... and fire...

Halloween is nearly here, and we celebrate with our second witchcraft themed room. And, if we're honest, this one may well be one of favourite room we've ever done. Or should we say... two rooms?

We have a spooky mystery for you... the case of the disappearing Halloween theme! We arrive at Confinement to find that one of the rooms we'd set aside for our Halloween theme is mysteriously not that spooky!! Okay, we didn't do our planning as well as we could but we're just vibing it out, alright? It's still a cute fun time.

Our Halloween season continues with a magical trip to Lilliputt Fun Zone Escape Rooms At Centre Place for a generic wizarding and witchcraft school-based fantasy themed room. Entirely unrelated to any other intellectual property you may be thinking of.

Also, unrelated, TRANS RIGHTS. Just while we have your attention. 

We kick off our spooktacular five-week Halloween season by tackling a slasher thriller of a room at Escapist Entertainment. We get trapped in a basement! The lights go out! There are body parts! And, most importantly, we demonstrate the importance of not sucking at sucking.

This week we escaped from the very idea of rooms themselves! We tackled Quake Escape, a scavenger-hunt-crossed-with-The-Amazing-Race-style challenge that took place on the streets of Hamilton's city centre. Tune in for a discussion of garn darn tarn, a crucial Diet Coke, and far and away the most disgusting thing we've ever had to beep out.

Oh, we do like to be beside the seaside. So much so that we took a weekend away in the beachy town of Tauranga, where we did not one but TWO escape rooms, Erye's Bank at Flummox, and Down the Rabbit Hole at Escape Rooms Tauranga, then sat down with a bottle of wine to talk about both of them. Listen to a juicy extended discussion of the dialect of calculators, getting our bums kicked by second rooms, and revelations about Kirsty's close personal friends in high places.

Come now, sport, don't let the scurrilous rumours of the goings-on at Murdoch Manor scare you away. Why, we're sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why those folks have gone missing. I'll be darned if the threat of being murdered keeps me away from a good scoop! 

Welcome to the jungle, baby, we got escape games. And board games. Namely Jumanji. We return to (and have difficulty pronouncing) Lilliput Fun Zone Escape Rooms in Centre Place for a jungle-themed room that delights us both, despite the bruises. Also Jim hasn't seen Jumanji, what's up with that?

Are we a 1980 single by The Clash? Because this week it's time to be a Bankrobber. We never hurt nobody, we just love to live that way, and we love to take as much money as we can from the bank vaults at Escapist Entertainment. Probably for the best that we're not actual criminals though, this room didn't go quite as well as we might have hoped. WHOOPS!

In our rowdiest episode yet, we take the bull by the horns and talk about this room until the cows come home. A repeat visit to Escape HQ yields talk of the mamaming mace, Grandma Bessie's tatas, and Regina George's convertible.

Pack your bags, it's time for summer camp! We break into the camp of our rivals, Camp Amity, to try and steal their beloved mascot. Featuring a return to Confinement Escape Rooms, a lot of tangential talk about tennis, horseriding and Bible studies, and the return of everyone's new favourite segment!

Jolly ho! Fire up the dirigible and set your brass voltascope to maximum, because we're taking a dive into the depths, with the Steampunk Submarine room at Lilliputt Fun Zone Escape Rooms at Centre Place.

We put on our archaeological hats and set off to explore a temple, just like Lara Croft but without the destruction. Hopefully. And what's more, we introduce a brand new segment! How much more thrilling can one episode get?

We take a trip to a backroom poker den, and don't do particularly well at getting out again. Now, is that our fault or the room's? Well, let's put it this way. The room can't get worse at doing its job because it hasn't had pizza yet.

One week in and we've already broken a promise. This week we skipped town and did an escape room in Wellington. Or more accurately, a room under the sea. In Atlantis. Potato potahto.

For our first episode, we go to Escape HQ (formerly Perplexity) and go on the hunt for a missing guitarist. We have a lot of fun, even despite the combination locks, problematic stereotypes, and, worst of all... 70s prog rock. 

Two friends (okay, actually we're married, we admit it) Kirsty and Jim are on a mission to do every escape room and talk about them. We started in the city of Kirikiriroa Hamilton (hence the name) in Aotearoa New Zealannd, but now we do escape rooms all over the place. And this is what our voices sound like!