Palace Games is a San Francisco amusement center at 3362 Palace Dr, 94123, offering immersive, history-inspired escape rooms. Guests solve clever puzzles in rooms like Edison, Houdini, Roosevelt, and Einstein, with strong puzzle design and interactive storytelling. Reviews highlight welcoming hosts and reliable clues, though some rooms vary in execution, making it a popular choice for team building and group outings.
What's left to say of Palace Games?
It was the first name off the lips of everyone I told about my plans to reserve an escape room, and it's easy to see why. With a sharp group of 8, The Attraction was an experience we'll probably talk about for the rest of our lives. Exceptional puzzle design, seamless build quality, and the sort of twists and turns you'd expect from a high-concept video game unburdened by the limits of the physical world. Escapism in its purest form. Can't recommend it enough.
C
Charlie Bird
via Google
· 9 months ago
The Edison Room is excellent. Everything was working and the puzzles were brilliant. 5 stars, one of the best escape rooms I've ever been in.
The Houdini Room was... Very. Disappointing. 2 stars. It had so much potential, and it would have been a better experience if it hadn't been sloppy in several areas.
In the beginning before the game started, we told the young woman that we didn't want clues without asking for them. She told us that the clues were necessary and that the success rate of the roomwas 7%, which right off the bat, tells you that the room needs some work. Dude. If the clues are necessary, it's bad game design.
I'm going to try to give a spoiler-free review.
Pros:
The overall vibe, visual design, theme and history were amazing. Can't emphasize this enough.
Cons:
Many of the puzzles are so close to being good. A few tweaks, & it would be excellent. If we'd only run into a few issues, I would have been ok, but they added up. The young man told us afterwards that meant puzzles need to be fixed intermittently. Fix them faster, these rooms are $$$.
A lightbulb in the Fire puzzle was a VERY ambiguous color. It should have been easily decipherable. We all thought it was a different color than it was. When we mentioned this after the game, we were told that "other teams didn't have any issues."
The Strauss puzzle should have been buttons instead of levers, because if one was left in the "on" position, the puzzle is completely undecipherable, (compounded by the location of the levers.) It's unclear how the colors should be organized based on previous puzzles. The same 8 colors shouldn't be used there, very misleading. Plus, Fire and Water puzzles used a certain method that indicated that a pattern was to repeated other times in the room, and it had nothing to do with the way to actually solve it. Red herring alert. I understood and liked the final part of the puzzle, very clever.
Using the patterns in the water puzzle to solve 2 separate puzzles was confusing. Usually the conceit for escape rooms is to only use an element once. I put the board away when I thought it was done with it.
The wooden puzzle was clear as to how to solve it, but actually deciphering it was visually difficult. Not impossible, good idea, but could be improved upon.
There were no erasers on the pencils.
In the Ford section on the wall, very cool idea, but it was very difficult to tell which letter we needed, the arrows often pointed in between selections. The mechanisms needed to be tightened to make the puzzle clear, especially considering how often the mechanism was used and how meticulous the following part of the puzzle was. We probably wasted at least 40 collective individual player minutes to try to get an accurate read.
In the fire puzzle, there was no consistency. Chaplin and Keller required a clue from the screen. Frustrating right off the bat.
There were too many possible paths to solve many of the puzzles, and we're unsolvable without necessary clues being given on the screen, and overlapping themes that didn't maintain consistency.
We couldn't solve 2 of the puzzles because they'd been hidden in weird places in the room.
The side activities meant to keep larger groups busy were at the same stations as the main puzzles, and sometimes used the same materials, causing confusion as to which puzzle was which.
Context: My partner and I have done scores of escape rooms, he's a published game designer, and we are sometimes compensated for giving feedback on rooms. This is only the second in which I've not escaped within the time limit. I'm glad they gave us time to finish the room even though we didn't do it in time. The young man who talked to us after the room simply justified all the issues we had, shrugged off our complaints, telling us "other teams got it." With a 7% success rate... sounded sus to me.
I would have been less disappointed w/this room if it weren't so expensive, & if my expectations hadn't been set by the Edison room. A room had better be nearly flawless at those prices.
R
Raghav Sharma
via Google
· 10 months ago
This was truly an intricately crafted and ornate escape room. The Great Houdini Escape Room was a uniquely curated space where woven historical moments were tied into creative puzzles, cryptography, and sequential analysis that push your cognitive skills to new heights. It puts into perspective the amount of creativity required to achieve this dynamic. Although not required, I recommend going into this escape room with a relatively sizable group that have some escape room experience making things more enjoyable. Whether you’re an avid historian, puzzle solver, or someone looking for a fun adventure give this place a try!
To the staff, thank you for your time, patience, and cordiality to accommodate my group near the closing hour. We absolutely appreciate you.
Here’s a photo of my group after we escaped Houdini’s elaborate design! Definitely excited to return in the near future!
S
Siva Kumar
via Google
· 10 months ago
Our creative marketing team had to put on our science hat to escape from the most elaborate Einstein room. We solved it at 111 minute mark. The puzzles and the set up was otherwordly. It definitely tests your temper. Highly recommend for team building
A
Amit Hattimare
via Google
· 11 months ago
We went with a team of 7 and played the Roosevelt room. It is a very fun and challenging room. We thoroughly enjoyed it. The hosts were very welcoming and explained us all the rules nicely. They give sufficient hints to allow us to make continuous progress. I highly recommend this for team building purposes. Finding the entrance to palace games can be challenging for first timers. It is on the outer Circle, near the parking space.
