Deep Space: Divinity & Dark are some of the best escape rooms around Melbourne, Australia. Here are our recommendations for great escape rooms in the Melbourne area.
Good boy, Enkidu!
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Date Played: September 7, 2024
Team Size: 2-6; we recommend 2-4
Duration: 70 minutes per journey
Price: $86 AUD per player for 2 players to $60 AUD per player for 5+ players
Ticketing: Private
Accessibility Consideration: At least one player must pull down a large hatch door
Emergency Exit Rating: [A] Push To Exit
Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints
REA Reaction
With their sci-fi thriller Deep Space, Ukiyo concocted a novel take on escape rooms which emphasized narrative, character interactions, and moral decisions over traditional puzzle-centric gameplay.
Deep Space consisted of two episodes — Deep Space: Divinity and Deep Space: Dark. These are separately bookable games, though Dark builds off of the narrative and decisions from your team’s experience in Divinity and as such must strictly be played after Divinity. For the sake of this review, I’ll be treating the two episodes as a single, interconnected experience.
I’m a big fan of this sort of episodic structure, which Ukiyo similarly applied to their two-episode The Crumbling Prince. In both worlds, the extra time allowed for the development of deeper and more nuanced stories, beyond what is possible in a standard hour-long escape room, yet without requiring the higher upfront commitment of booking a three-hour game.
If we judge escape rooms by their lasting emotional effect, Deep Space earned top marks. Months later, the consequences, both positive and negative, of my team’s actions still haunt my memory. Too many escape rooms present dramatic conundrums only to let players off easy in the case of failure. Deep Space took a different approach, leaning fully into realism and moral ambiguity. We didn’t always have enough information to make the right choice, nor was there always even a “right” choice. Through forced failure and actual failure alike, we sometimes did the wrong thing, something bad happened as a result, and we had to live with it.
On the flip side, sometimes we did the right thing, helped someone, and felt all the better for it. Our wins felt extra well earned, and there was a refreshing depth of ethical interactivity throughout.
While there were plenty of serious scenarios to navigate in both chapters of Deep Space, much of this game was also adorable and delightful. This largely came in the form of Enkidu, our ship’s AI system who presented himself as a truly adorable pixelated corgi. Enkidu was a delight to interact with, and I left Deep Space feeling like I’d made a friend.
The experiences at Ukiyo are not for everyone, but they were most definitely for me. If you similarly enjoy nuanced narratives and playful character interactions, every single game at Ukiyo is a strong must-play. I’ve traveled far and wide to find such thoughtful narrative-centric escape room-esque experiences, and to the best of my knowledge, the style presented across both Deep Space and The Crumbling Prince is singularly unique in the current international escape room scene.
Who is this for?
- Story seekers
- Sci-fi fans
- Any experience level
Why play?
- A deep and personal interactive narrative
- Unforgettable characters
Story
We awoke from cryogenic stasis on the Ishtar VII. Something had gone wrong that required human attention, and with the help of our AI companion Enkidu, we investigated the problem.
Setting
Deep Space took place on a futuristic spaceship. With vaulted metal hallways and some embedded screens, there were few visible controls as the ship was mostly controlled by an AI. Just outside, we could see a glimpse of the alien planet we’d landed on.
Gameplay
Ukiyo’s Deep Space was a narrative-centric escapist experience with a low level of puzzle difficulty and a high level of emotional interactivity.
Core gameplay revolved around interacting and building relationships with characters, making moral decisions, and solving simple puzzles and tasks.
Analysis
➕ Deep Space didn’t shy away from bold emotions and morally complex decisions. We experienced a level of true agency that’s rare in escape rooms, and we had to live with the consequences of our actions, decisions, and achievements.
➕ Ukiyo offered an optional online text adventure prequel entitled Exodus which set the stage for the in-person Deep Space experience. Exodus was a well-written and satisfying game in and of itself, and it provided worldbuilding and info which actionably enhanced certain moments in our in-person experience. If you don’t have a chance to play Exodus, though, everything in Deep Space will still make complete sense.
➕/❓ Deep Space had some puzzles, but most of the gameplay centered around narrative and character interaction. This might not be the experience for you if you’re looking for more traditional action- and puzzle-packed escape room gameplay. Conversely, I could see Deep Space serving as a great intro to escape rooms for LARPers and TTRPGers.
➕ The set design in Deep Space was compact yet highly effective in establishing a clear sense of place.
➖ With a team of 4 players, we experienced multiple bottleneck moments where not every player had something to do.
➕/➖ The story continued meaningfully between Divinity and Dark, and I was grateful to not end on an emotional cliffhanger at the end of Divinity. However, it felt as though only the story had been developed further in Dark, leaving us with minimal changes or new features in gameplay or environment. Within the constraints of the existing space, there was an opportunity to indicate the passage of time between episodes with small physical changes, or add in new standalone physical props to better vary the gameplay. Instead, we experienced light riffs on essentially the same puzzles from the previous episode. Deep Space: Dark was, in my opinion, absolutely still worth playing and held its own in narrative, but if I had to skip one game of the four currently at Ukiyo’s main location, it would be Dark.
➕ The main character in Deep Space, named Enkidu, was a truly delightful take on an AI. Endearing in form and function, our range of interactions allowed us to form a strong emotional connection, which then served as a strong foundation off of which for us to explore a range of difficult moral quandaries.
Tips For Visiting
- Dark picked up right where Divinity left off. They can be played back-to-back or on separate occasions, but you must play Divinity before Dark, and ideally with the same teammates. The two episodes take place in the same physical space. If you were to join a team just for Dark, your experience would still mostly make sense… but it just wouldn’t land the same way.
- Though there were many branch points throughout Deep Space, I don’t believe these branches were sufficiently different to justify replaying the same episode multiple times.
- We enjoyed multiple meals between games at Coburger & Co, right across the street from Ukiyo. They offer reasonably priced burgers and fries, as well as a range of plant-based options.
Book your session with Ukiyo’s Deep Space saga, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.
Disclosure: Ukiyo provided media discounted tickets for this game.
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