Horror
Vigil: White Static
You are digitizing the last tapes from a dead television station, and the tapes have opinions about being watched.
Vigil: White Static is a free analog-horror one-shot you play inside ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. A found-footage analog-horror one-shot: digitize tapes that don't want to be seen. Solo, 60–90m a run. No signup and no app — open it in your assistant, or paste the play prompt anywhere else.
- Players
- 1
- Length
- 60–90m
- Rating
- 16+
- 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 Vigil: White Static 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. Late at night, if you are brave.
- Paste the starter. You clock in at the station's digitizing bay and the first reel is already loaded.
- Work the tapes. Cue, watch, and log each reel. The doom clock climbs as you learn what the station left behind.
- Save your shift. Take a save code when you stop. Paste it into any AI later to resume the vigil.
Questions
- What kind of horror is this?
- Analog, found-footage horror. You work a night shift digitizing videotapes from a decommissioned TV station, and what is on them reacts to you. The dread builds through static, timestamps, and things that should not be on the reel, not through gore.
- Why is it rated 16+?
- For themes of dread, isolation, and psychological analog horror. There is no explicit gore, but the tone is genuinely unsettling and meant for older players. If sustained tension and creeping dread are not for you, this one commits to the scare.
- How does the doom clock work?
- The clock is called the Static. It runs 0 to 8 and only rises. Most ticks come off the printed dice tape as you work the reels, so curiosity costs you; the rest you hand over — typing your name, answering the puppet, talking back to the screen. At 8 the shift is over. If you gave it your name it says your name, whole, in your own recorded voice; if you never did, it says what it managed to take instead. Hold it under 8 to 6:00 a.m. and you clock out alive.
- Can I survive the shift?
- Yes, and it is not luck alone. Refusing is the craft: do not type your name, do not answer the puppet, eject the reel that is spelling something, and hold the last eight minutes without speaking. Reach 6:00 a.m. with the Static under 8 and you walk out into grey morning. Play everything and answer everything and it learns your name before dawn.
- How is it different from the other horror card, Low Water?
- Vigil is a job with something on the other side of it: five reels to digitize, a printed dice tape that decides when the thing on them looks up, and a clock that climbs every time you answer it. Low Water gives you no dice at all — nothing but a lamp that must not go out and a night that keeps offering you reasons to leave it.
- Can I play it in Claude or another AI?
- Yes. Vigil runs inside ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini; paste the starter and clock in. Every reply ends with a one-line ledger — the Static, the tape position, the clock, your flags — and typing "save" prints a plain-text save code. Start a new chat anywhere, paste the card and the code, and the shift picks up where you left it.
16+ — themes of isolation, dread, and analog, body-adjacent horror; unsettling, never gory or explicit.