In short: Answers about Death Row, the horror escape room in development at Escape This: the Keeper and his chair, what’s been confirmed, what hasn’t, and where to hear when it opens.
Death Row is a horror escape room Escape This is building, set on the forgotten execution wing of a prison that should have closed long ago. Your team has been sentenced to the electric chair and must break out before the switch is thrown. No venue or opening date has been announced yet.
Yes. Escape This announced Death Row as the room that picks up where Buried Alive left off, carrying its extreme-horror line from a premature burial to the electric chair. You won’t need to have played Buried Alive first to understand Death Row, because each story stands on its own.
When Escape This first revealed Death Row, it described the room as the single most extreme escape room in the world, raising the stakes beyond Buried Alive. Treat that as the studio’s ambition rather than a measured ranking; how intense the finished Death Row feels will be clear once it opens.
In the story of Death Row, the deadline is midnight, when the Keeper throws the switch. The first announcement gave teams one hour of real time, but Escape This will confirm the final running time of Death Row once the room is ready to book.
The electric chair at the heart of Death Row is a set piece made for the game: the wooden frame, leather straps and metal skullcap you can see in the room’s artwork. It is a theatrical prop built by Escape This, not a working execution device.
In the Death Row story, the Keeper named his electric chair Mercy because he believes it is the final kindness a condemned prisoner will ever receive. Inmates on the Row hear him speak of Mercy long before they set eyes on it.
Midnight is when the switch is thrown. On Death Row the prison generator starts charging the moment your cell doors unlock, the lights flicker lower each time it climbs, and by twelve the chair is ready. Your team has until then to find the way off the Row.
No. The chair in Death Row belongs to fiction and to American history, where the electric chair was first used in 1890. Australian executions were by hanging, the last took place in 1967, and the death penalty was abolished in every state by 1985 and barred nationally in 2010.
The Keeper is the face the villain wears on Death Row: the last executioner of Ironwood Penitentiary, who stayed behind when the prison was ordered shut and carried on its sentences in secret. Underneath, he is the Undertaker from Buried Alive. He fills in every death warrant himself, keeps every date, and has never once granted a reprieve.
The Undertaker, the villain of Buried Alive, is behind Death Row too. On the Row he goes by the Keeper, Ironwood’s last executioner, one more disguise for a man whose other alter egos run Asylum, Cannibal and Meat Grinder. His comic diary at theundertaker.com.au tells the rest of his story.
Death Row takes place on the condemned wing of Ironwood Penitentiary, a fictional prison whose death cells were supposed to be cleared and bricked up decades ago. Escape This is building the cells, the corridor and the execution chamber at the end of it from scratch.
The ledger is where the Keeper of Death Row records every prisoner he has sent to the chair, each name dated in tidy copperplate. Tonight’s page already lists your team. Whether any name was ever crossed out is something you will badly want to know.
Death Row never says. Your team wakes in the cells with no memory of a trial, only a signed death warrant, a cold last meal and the Keeper’s assurance that the paperwork is in order. Proving your innocence matters far less than getting out before midnight.
No. Ironwood Penitentiary and its Keeper were invented for Death Row. The room draws on the look of an old execution chamber, but the prison, its guards and its condemned are fiction, and any likeness to a real gaol is coincidental.
Escape This has not set an opening date for Death Row. Launch years mentioned in earlier announcements have come and gone, so treat any older date as out of date. The new date will appear on this site as soon as Escape This confirms it.
No venue has been confirmed for Death Row. Escape This runs escape rooms in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, and the room was first announced for Perth, but where Death Row actually opens will only be settled closer to launch.
Not yet. Tickets for Death Row will go on sale once the room is finished and installed in a venue. Registering on the Escape This coming-soon page is the surest way to hear the moment Death Row bookings open.
Prices for Death Row haven’t been released. Escape This sets per-player pricing when a room opens for bookings, so Death Row’s prices will be published here and on escapethis.com.au at that point.
You shouldn’t. Escape This books every game exclusively for one group, a policy it has held since before COVID, and nothing announced so far suggests Death Row will be any different. Your team should be the only prisoners on the Row.
Death Row news lands on the Escape This coming-soon page and its social channels first, and this site is updated at the same time. Register your interest there to hear about the venue, the date and the booking link for Death Row.
Almost everything practical. Death Row is still in development, so its venue, team size, age rule, difficulty, running time and price may all differ from the first announcement. Only details Escape This has confirmed are presented as facts on this site.
Death Row is being built as horror, with an electric chair at its centre, so expect dread, darkness and a countdown to your own execution rather than light-hearted puzzling. Escape This will publish age guidance and any content warnings for Death Row before tickets go on sale.
The team size for Death Row is still to be confirmed. The original announcement imagined exactly four prisoners, one for each chair, but Escape This hasn’t said whether that holds for the finished room, so wait for the booking page before you gather your cellmates.
Escape This hasn’t published a final age rule for Death Row. The room was first pitched at adult escapers, which suits an execution-themed horror game, but the official minimum age for Death Row will be confirmed when bookings open.
Death Row doesn’t have a difficulty rating yet. Escape This originally aimed it at seasoned escapers, so a team new to escape rooms may want to warm up on a current Escape This room before taking the walk to the chair.
The original Death Row plans included panic buttons for anyone who needed to leave early and CCTV watching every team throughout. Escape This will confirm the safety features of the finished Death Row when it publishes the room’s booking details.
Escape This welcomes costumes, so a prison jumpsuit for Death Row is fair game. Whatever you wear, pick closed shoes and clothes that let you move freely; final dress guidance for Death Row will come with its booking details.
While Death Row is being built, High Noon locks your outlaw gang in a frontier gaol in Perth CBD, and The Dunny traps you in an outback long drop in Perth CBD and Manly. Both come from the team making Death Row.
Death Row is being designed and built by Escape This, which makes its sets and props in its own workshop in Perth. Escape This is Australia’s largest escape room operator, with its own escape room design studio and escape room factory.
Put your name down with Escape This and you’ll hear about the venue and the first bookings before anyone else.