Calico Jack has taken your ship and thrown you in the hold of his galleon. His crew is sleeping off the rum, his treasure is unguarded, and at first light you walk the plank, unless you’re long gone in a lifeboat.
In short: In Pirates, your ship surrenders to the notorious Calico Jack and you wake up a prisoner below deck. His crew is drunk and asleep, and the treasure is unguarded. You have until dawn to break free, take it and reach a lifeboat, or you walk the plank.
Weeks of open ocean, and at last a smudge of land on the horizon. Then a second sail appears: a galleon, fast and closing, with the Jolly Roger at the masthead.
Your captain knows that ship. It belongs to Calico Jack, the quickest and most feared pirate in the Caribbean. The white flag goes up without a fight, and within minutes you’re prisoners on his deck.
Night falls. Sea fog rolls over the water and Calico Jack’s crew drinks itself to sleep. Below deck, in the dark, you start working on your chains.
One sailor stays awake: Scarface, Calico Jack’s first mate, with a face like a thundercloud and a soft spot for prisoners. The captain trusts him completely. He really shouldn’t.
His treasure is aboard and nobody is guarding it. If you can get free, find it and reach a lifeboat before first light, you’ll be rich and gone.
If dawn finds you still aboard, Calico Jack will have you walking the plank. You have one hour.
Rich by dawn, or shark food.
Pirates was built as a working galleon: creaking timber, chains, cannons, a captain’s log and the treasure chest, all inside a building. It’s Escape This’s friendliest room for first-timers without being a pushover.
Stills from the Pirates set.
Pirates came first. Escape This built Calico Jack’s galleon full-size inside its venues, then followed his story to Pirate Island.
Play the rooms in either order; each is complete on its own. But meeting Jack aboard his own ship first makes the island hideout feel like a well-earned sequel.
Captain Hook, Sinbad, Blackbeard, Jack Sparrow or a lowly deckhand all work. Talk like a pirate from the first chain to the lifeboat and you’ll earn bonus points from the gamesmaster.
Pirates is a 60-minute adventure escape room by Escape This. You’re prisoners below deck on Calico Jack’s galleon, and his crew is asleep. You have to break free, find his treasure and escape in a lifeboat before dawn, when you’d walk the plank. It plays in Perth CBD, Sydney CBD and Melbourne CBD, and drops anchor in Brisbane CBD in the first half of 2027.
Yes. Pirates opens Escape This’s Calico Jack saga, and Pirate Island follows it, with Jack’s island hideout. Each room stands on its own, but the Escape This team suggests starting aboard his ship in Pirates.
There was: Dead Man’s Chest, the trilogy’s finale, about Calico Jack’s cursed chest and Davy Jones. It ran only at Escape This Perth CBD during 2024 and has since been retired, so Pirates and Pirate Island are the two chapters you can still play.
Calico Jack, the quickest and most feared pirate in the Caribbean and, in his own opinion, the best dressed. Pirates borrows the nickname of John Rackham, a real pirate of the early 1700s; everything else about this captain, from his vanity to his habit of losing prisoners, is Escape This’s invention.
The captain’s first mate, and the fiercest-looking sailor aboard. Don’t let the scar fool you: in Pirates, Scarface is quietly on the prisoners’ side, and Calico Jack hasn’t worked it out. He’s back in Pirate Island, the sequel, still covering his tracks.
Daybreak is when Calico Jack’s crew wakes up and your absence is noticed. Pirates gives you the hours of fog and darkness to slip away. If you’re still aboard at first light, the story ends with you walking the plank.
His treasure. It’s stashed somewhere aboard the galleon while the pirates sleep, and Pirates is won by finding it and getting off the ship with it before daylight.
It was a real pirate rule: a crew shared the plunder from a raid, and if they took nothing, nobody was paid. It’s the Pirates tagline because the whole room is a raid. Leave Calico Jack’s ship empty-handed and you’ve got nothing to show for it.
Pirates is played across more than one chamber of the ship, starting below deck and moving into the captain’s quarters. The door between the chambers is what makes the Perth CBD version unsuitable for wheelchairs.
Definitely. Hook, Sinbad, Blackbeard and Jack Sparrow all suit the ship, and bonus points go to crews that stay in pirate voice the whole hour. Closed shoes, please.
Escape This built Pirates’ galleon set in-house at its Perth workshop, the same team that went on to make Pirate Island. Escape This is Australia’s largest escape room operator, with its own escape room design studio and escape room factory.
The first mate does, in secret. Scarface writes up many of the same days from the other side: the prisoners he helps, the tracks he covers and the captain who never suspects him. His journal lives on the site of Pirate Island, the sequel to Pirates, and doesn’t repeat a word of the captain’s log.
Book Pirates in Perth, Sydney or Melbourne. Two to eight of you, one ship, one hour of darkness.
