What secrets might we find inside Thomas Edison’s “recently discovered study”?

Upon arriving at the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts in the Presidio of San Francisco, it seems a bit …off that visitors to Palace Games must go around to the back of the facility and enter through a boring set of black double doors, leading into a clean but small office space. But despite outward appearances, there is a cleverly detailed, thoughtful world ready to unfold in their latest escape room experience, The Edison Escape Room, which joins the already popular The Roosevelt Escape Room and The Great Houdini Escape Room.

After a short introduction centered around the building of the Palace of Fine Arts specifically for the World’s Fair in San Francisco in 1915, my group of six eager players were let loose in Edison’s “recently discovered study” and found ourselves progressing through a series of period-appropriate puzzles themed around Edison’s inventions.

While the backstory of the Palace of Fine Arts was interesting as a piece of local history, the preamble to the room itself wasn’t essential to the puzzling but neither added nor detracted from the overall experience. That said, escape room fans will find a refreshing diversity of things to solve as well as carefully chosen set pieces like a gorgeous (but non-functional) Victrola which add to the old-timey atmosphere. The Edison Escape Room offers larger collaborative puzzles to solve as a group as well as simultaneous puzzles where we were able to break off into multiple smaller groups, laddering up into a larger group puzzle as a final step. The two gamemasters in attendance that day helpfully popped into the room on occasion when they sensed we might be stuck, to offer tips or a bit of very light direction.

Personally, I was also glad to see only a small number of combination locks and keys used throughout the room, which can make long series of puzzles feel tedious or repetitive; however there was one puzzle requiring multiple in-person hints, as we found the solution to be non-intuitive and overly complicated for no apparent reason. Because the rest of the design of The Edison Escape Room is so impressive, flaws in a weak, laborious puzzle tend to stand out more. Additionally, a laminated card containing clues seemed to appear far too late to be helpful during one chapter; in our post-room discussion, it seemed like the company is taking steps to make this clue more obvious, and more helpful earlier on during the experience.

The final chapter of The Edison Escape Room was both physically challenging enough to require intense focus but also deceptively simple in its design. Working as a team to complete the given task and testing our abilities to act as a well-oiled unit, the physical aspect of the room reminded me of games that I (and many others) have played as a child: walking while staying completely within the edges of floor tiles, or traversing the room while pretending the floor is made of lava. The technology embedded in the room really shone here.

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And after completing this particular escape room, I can also promise that I’ll never look at ordinary objects like milk bottles or mason jars the same way again. Even something as dry as the periodic table of elements was used to great effect. The Edison Escape Room also demonstrated that something as clichéd as the use of a black light can feel fresh in the right hands. (And you know you’ve got a winner on your hands when your entire group collectively gasps after a big reveal.)

However, those interested in this particular escape room should be prepared for a lengthy, intense experience of 100–120 minutes. Palace Games often allows groups who don’t finish in the allotted time an extra 20 minutes to complete the room if another group hasn’t booked the next time slot. My group of six players (with a few novices who had all met for the first time that morning) did not finish in the given 100 minutes and ended up taking the two full hours to get to the end of the room, despite fatigue setting in.

My group of players had a collective Lord of the Rings moment when we had thought we’d finished The Edison Escape Room and then found… yet another challenge to complete. Some of the puzzles could have been removed from the experience without diminishing our enjoyment, at the end of the day. Luckily, we still felt very committed at this stage, and engaged enough with the experience to continue, but less energetic participants may feel compelled to walk away. A larger, more experienced group of 7 or 8 people would likely have had more success than we did in completing all the puzzles in the allotted time.

As a newcomer to Palace Games, I was impressed how seamless the experience ended up feeling and how basic scientific principles were cleverly integrated into the gameplay. Their approach to escape room design also successfully incorporates a lot of complex, proprietary technology while avoiding the fragility you might find in less polished operations. Palace Games is known for a premium experience and their latest creation does not disappoint. If you’re an escape room fan looking for a top-tier, challenging escape room with both technical wizardry and unexpected gameplay, head out to San Francisco to try out the newly launched Edison Escape Room at Palace Games.

The Edison Room at Palace Games is open now; tickets are $400 for each group, for a range of 4–8 players.

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