Escape Rooms
Cipherhouse
Locked in a dead cryptographer's house, you break a chain of five ciphers to the door before the candle dies; the exit code was sealed before you began.
Cipherhouse is a free escape room you play inside ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. A five-lock cipher escape room whose exit code is sealed before you're locked in. Solo, 40–55m a run. No signup and no app — open it in your assistant, or paste the play prompt anywhere else.
- Players
- 1
- Length
- 40–55m
- Rating
- All ages
- Version
- 1.1.0
Works with ChatGPT · Claude · Gemini. Free, no signup.
Opens your assistant with the game loaded. ChatGPT usually runs it straight away; Claude waits for you to press send. Same link on your phone as on your desktop. Playing in Gemini? Tap Copy the play prompt and paste it into a new chat. What works where.
No web access, or want it as an installed app?
The game card is the entire game — every scene, rule and answer, about 13k characters. Paste it when your assistant can't browse the web. The Skill installs Cipherhouse into Claude on any plan: download it, then turn on code execution under Settings → Capabilities and add it at Customize → Skills → + → Upload a skill.
How to start
- Open your AI. Start a new chat in ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. No paid plan required.
- Paste the room card. The card seals the escape code with a SHA-256 hash and locks you in the Cipherhouse.
- Break the chain. Decode five linked locks, each answer the key to the next, before the hour-candle burns out.
- Escape and verify. Speak the final code to open the door, then paste the reveal into aigamecards.com/verify to confirm the seal held.
Questions
- Can ChatGPT actually run an escape room?
- Yes — the decoding is yours, and the house only holds the answer key. Merrit Vane wrote down what each of the five locks opens on before he died, and that list rides inside the card, so the AI's whole job is to say whether the line you read out matches it: the drawer springs, or two minutes of candle are gone. It cannot invent a sixth lock, and it cannot quietly widen the fifth because you are close.
- Can the house change the exit code once I'm inside?
- No, and that is what the seal is for. The code was written and hashed with SHA-256 before the spring-latch shut, and the house reads you that hash at first light of the candle. Whatever you speak at the hearthstone door is checked against a code fixed before you arrived; when the run is over you paste the published reveal into aigamecards.com/verify, which rebuilds the hash in your browser and shows whether the two still match.
- Do I need to be good at ciphers?
- No — all five are schoolbook ciphers, and the card teaches each one in place: a shift, a keyword alphabet, a line-and-word lookup, four dials of arithmetic, an acrostic. Say "hint" and the house gives the next rung of a three-step ladder for five minutes of candle; ask outright and it hands you that lock's answer for ten. Buying all five answers outright costs fifty of your sixty minutes and still leaves the door reachable; it is grinding every hint ladder to the bottom that leaves you waiting for morning with Vane.
- What happens when the candle burns out?
- The night-bolt drops and you wait for morning with Vane: the run ends trapped and scores zero, however many locks you had open. The candle starts at sixty minutes, and only wrong answers and help burn it — reading and thinking are free. If it is getting low, say "save", and the facing lock, the ones already open and the minutes left print as a code you can carry into a new chat.
- Do I need pen and paper?
- Not strictly, but the card cabinet is kinder with a scrap of one — writing the cipher alphabet out under A–Z takes a minute and saves several. Everything else can be done in your head or typed straight into the chat; the house reads your working along with you and volunteers nothing you have not asked for.