The Curium Experience (Melbourne)

Review by Michael

Probably a masterpiece, and a stand-out amid the already sublime array of escape rooms in Melbourne, The Curium Experience begins well and ends well, with very few slow points in the middle. It has to be admitted, I had some help in this room, as my escape-buddy couldn’t join me on the morning of 2023 when I was invited to see this marvel in person.

Without giving too much away, one of the unique features of this room is that it asks its players to engage with three different forms of technology, at least one of which will be from way outside anyone’s range of lived experience. But once you catch on to how a machine works, and why it works that way, it conveys the ideal “all downhill from here” feeling. Everything is so coherent, in fact, that an ironic “problem” occurs only when the room makes shout-outs to films/cultural phenomena that people my age would know. These are not clues, they’re Easter eggs, meant to provoke a quick laugh of recognition — but if you try to interpret them as part of the story, you’ll be lost. It’s kind of a shame they’re in there, especially since they do tend to make audiences happy, which in turn makes them seem like a good idea to venue owners — because it’s hard to measure the fact that the experience would have been more seamless and immersive without them.

I hope the rating makes it clear that that’s the very tiniest of gripes, though. Overall and in general, the “competence fantasy” is ideal in this room, which is a master class on how to make audiences feel cleverer than their surroundings. The Curium Experience ushers players first through an experience of “outsmarting” the setting, then of mastering a science as an honorary “expert”, and beyond that, of mastering a technology hitherto unknown; a three-act drama. And it does, in the best ways, feel like being on the inside of one of those movies where a kid somehow succeeds where all the grown-ups failed, and does so by sneakily mastering top-secret tech, and breaking the rules when that’s clearly in everyone’s best interest. That’s probably why so many people in The Curium’s audience feel like a wish has been granted, one which most of us made so long ago, we scarcely remember.
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