A nuclear stand-off has driven POTUS underground, and now the bunker's blast doors have sealed from the inside. You have one hour, a locked command room and the nuclear football to work out who shut you in and why.
In short: In The President's Bunker, a nuclear stand-off sends POTUS into an underground command bunker with the nuclear football. Then the blast doors seal from inside, the lines to the surface die and a launch countdown starts. As the President's crisis staff, you have one hour to find who did it and stop the clock.
The crisis began as a rumour at a summit and ended as a confrontation between nuclear powers. Ambassadors have been recalled, bombers are fuelled, and every intelligence agency on earth is listening to the same silence.
Protocol is simple: when the risk of a strike crosses a line, the President goes underground. Tonight that protocol has been triggered, and POTUS has been escorted down a long concrete shaft into the bunker built for exactly this moment.
You go down too. You are the President's inner crisis staff, the people trusted with codes, cables and the black leather case that never leaves the President's side.
Minutes after the last door closes, the bunker locks itself down. Lines to the surface drop one by one. The authentication system refuses every code you enter, and on the command wall a countdown begins that nobody in the room started.
Someone with clearance has turned the safest room in the country into a trap. Break the lockdown, restore contact with the surface and stop the countdown before a decision nobody made is carried out in the President's name.
The bunker was built to keep the President safe. Tonight it's keeping everyone in.
The President's Briefcase was Escape This's first head-to-head game. Instead of a room, each team of two to four worked on one briefcase for 30 minutes, and two identical cases meant two teams could race. Its story put players on a taskforce restoring contact with Air Force One as a leaked nuclear deal pushed the world towards war.
That game has now closed. Rather than retire the idea, Escape This is rebuilding it on a bigger scale: The President's Bunker swaps the single case for a whole underground command post and doubles the time to a full hour. It opens at Escape This Melbourne CBD in April 2027.
The story on this site is a preview written while the room is built. Team sizes, ages, prices and difficulty will be confirmed by Escape This before bookings open.
Before the Bunker there was the Briefcase: a 30-minute race to stop a launch, played around one locked case at two Perth venues. 3,196 people took the National Security Advisor's chair before it closed.
People hosted counts every booked player in Escape This's booking system (ER-OS); dates are when each room was bookable. Figures from ER-OS, 27 October 2026.
The President's Bunker is a new full-hour escape room from Escape This, opening at Escape This Melbourne CBD in April 2027. Your team is the President's crisis staff, sealed inside an underground command bunker during a nuclear stand-off, racing to break a lockdown nobody ordered.
The President's Bunker is built as a political thriller rather than a horror room. The tension comes from sealed doors, dead phone lines and a launch clock, not from jump scares. Escape This will confirm age guidance before bookings open.
In the story preview, yes. The black case that carries a president's launch authority, nicknamed the nuclear football, is sealed in the bunker with your team. In The President's Bunker it links the new room to the original game, where a single briefcase was the centre of every puzzle.
The President's Briefcase has closed. Escape This has confirmed it is coming back as The President's Bunker, a bigger, redesigned room that runs for a full hour instead of 30 minutes. The President's Bunker opens at Escape This Melbourne CBD in April 2027.
The President's Briefcase ran at Escape This Northbridge from August 2021 to December 2023, and at Escape This Perth CBD from January 2023 to December 2024. Escape This's booking records show 3,196 people played it in total — 861 at Northbridge and 2,335 at Perth CBD. The President's Bunker carries that story on in Melbourne.
The President's Briefcase was a 30-minute game played around a single briefcase rather than a whole room. Small teams of two to four could race head-to-head against a rival team on an identical case next door. The President's Bunker replaces it with a full-hour room.
In The President's Briefcase, Air Force One lost contact over the Atlantic while POTUS flew to a world summit with a controversial nuclear deal. Players were the National Security Advisor's taskforce restoring the link. The President's Bunker picks up that nuclear thread in a new setting.
The President's Bunker is the successor to The President's Briefcase: the same presidential nuclear-crisis world, rebuilt as a larger room with a full hour on the clock. You don't need to have played the Briefcase to follow the Bunker's story.
That's the mystery. In The President's Bunker the lockdown starts from inside, using clearance only a handful of trusted people hold. Working out who triggered it, and what they want the countdown to achieve, is part of how your crisis staff gets out.
In The President's Bunker story, a timer appears on the command wall minutes after the doors lock, and nobody in the room started it. Your team has to restore contact with the surface and stop that countdown before something is done in the President's name.
Your team plays the President's inner crisis staff: the advisers trusted with authentication codes, secure lines and the nuclear football. When The President's Bunker seals, you're the only people in a position to work out what went wrong.
No. The President's Bunker is a fictional command bunker designed by Escape This. Real governments do keep hardened shelters for leaders in a crisis, and that idea inspired the room, but the layout, the lockdown and the plot are invented.
The President's Bunker should appeal to fans of political thrillers and Cold War-style stand-offs, players who remember The President's Briefcase and want the longer version, and Melbourne teams who've already escaped the rooms on Collins Street.
Escape This itself. The President's Bunker is an in-house production: Escape This writes, designs and builds its rooms with its own team and its own escape room factory in Perth rather than buying them in. Escape This is Australia’s largest escape room operator, with its own escape room design studio and escape room factory.
Put your name on the Escape This coming-soon list and you'll hear before The President's Bunker sessions go on sale.
