The best games to play with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
Updated
The best games to play with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini are ones built for a text model's strengths. Games where you keep the secret, like 20 Questions, work out of the box; games where the AI must keep one, like hangman or a whodunit, only work when the answer is fixed before you start. That is what the 25 free games here do, from a sealed murder mystery like Blackfile to an AI-run tabletop RPG like The Toll at Blackbridge, across 11 shelves.
What games can you play with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini?
You can play original text games in any of the three: role-playing campaigns your AI runs as game master, sealed whodunits, social deduction against NPCs, honest chess drills, horror one-shots, hidden-information duels, cipher escape rooms, and sealed word games. Each is a game card — a self-contained prompt, engineered so the AI holds its shape instead of drifting. A button on its page opens ChatGPT or Claude with the prompt ready; you send it and the game boots. Any other assistant takes the same prompt, and one that can't open links takes the whole card pasted in instead. All 25 games sit on the 11 shelves below; every title links to its own page and its shelf.
Which classic games work in a chat, and which break?
The test is simple: does the AI have to keep a secret? A chat assistant has no memory outside the conversation you can see. If the answer to a game is never written down, nothing holds it still, and the assistant can settle on whichever answer fits your guesses best. Games where you hold the secret, or where there is no secret at all, play beautifully as they are.
| Game | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 20 Questions (the AI guesses) | Works | You hold the secret and the AI only asks, so there is nothing for it to forget or quietly change. |
| 20 Questions (you guess) | Breaks | The AI never wrote its answer down. It can keep any answer that fits your questions so far, so the reveal is chosen at the end, not the start. |
| Hangman and Wordle-style guessing | Breaks | Same hidden-word problem, plus letter counting: models read text in chunks, not letters, so the blanks and the yellow-green feedback drift. The Word-Hoard seals its words first. |
| Trivia quiz | Shaky | Fun and fast, but the AI marks its own questions. A confident wrong answer key is the failure to watch for, so check anything you would bet on. |
| Would You Rather, riddles, story chains | Works | No hidden state and no right answer to hold, which is exactly what a chat model is good at. |
| Murder mystery | Breaks | Unless the culprit is fixed in advance, the AI can make whoever you accuse guilty and rewrite the clues to agree. Sealed mysteries hash the answer first. |
| Chess against the AI | Breaks | The model predicts moves as text and keeps no board, so long games collect illegal moves and vanishing pieces. What AI chess is good for instead. |
| D&D-style role-playing | Shaky | Great improv, weak bookkeeping: hit points, inventory and rolls drift unless the rules and the state are written out every turn. How a card keeps the GM consistent. |
Which one should you play first?
If you have fifteen minutes, take The Word-Hoard — five words sealed before you start, six clues apiece, and the fewer you need the more the round is worth. If you have a whole evening, take Blackfile №1: The Vanishing at Larchmont Hall, a 60–90 minute locked-room case whose culprit is fixed by a published hash before you open it. If you're playing with a kid, take Bramblewood: all ages, no violence and nothing scary in it.
Every game in the catalog, by shelf
Tabletop RPG
Original role-playing systems and campaigns your AI runs as game master.
| The Toll at Blackbridge | A one-night Ironquill mystery run by your AI game master: the bridge is owed a thing it was never given, and the river is rising. |
|---|---|
| The Severed Spire | Chapter 1 of an Ironquill campaign inside a mile-high tower that sinks an inch a day; your save carries into the chapters to come. |
| The Gilt Horologe | A one-night Ironquill heist inside a living clockwork vault that winds shut behind you, run by your AI game master. |
| Bramblewood | A gentle, all-ages Ironquill one-shot your AI runs as game master: a woodland festival you set right with kindness. |
Sealed Mystery
Whodunits whose solution is cryptographically sealed before you start — the AI can't cheat.
| Blackfile №1: The Vanishing at Larchmont Hall | A 1925 locked-room whodunit: an heiress bolts a glass conservatory from the inside and is not there when the doors come down. |
|---|---|
| Blackfile №2: A Death at the Wyke Hydro | A snowbound 1929 poisoning whodunit: six suspects, one cup of hot milk, and an answer sealed before you start. |
| Blackfile №3: The Long Exposure at Harrowfell | A 1953 observatory whodunit: a death on the dome stair, six suspects who cannot leave the fell, twenty moves, and a culprit sealed before you start. |
Social Deduction
Find the liar among NPCs your AI plays, with a committed setup you can verify.
Chess & Strategy
Fixed-answer puzzles and honest trainers — what AI is actually good at.
| Counterplay | Fixed-answer chess puzzles and an openings coach, not a full-strength opponent. |
|---|---|
| The Resumption: Seven Endgames | A timed endgame-technique drill over seven named textbook positions, where anything but the method move ends the board. |
Horror
Solo dread one-shots that commit to the scare instead of chickening out — one shift, one night, no one coming.
| Vigil: White Static | A found-footage analog-horror one-shot: digitize tapes that don't want to be seen. |
|---|---|
| Low Water | A solo lighthouse-horror one-shot: keep the light burning through one night on the rock. |
Duels
Fast hidden-information duels — the answer is sealed before your first move, and you verify it after.
| Deadreckoning | A hidden-fleet naval duel against an AI whose layout is sealed and verifiable. |
|---|---|
| Aqua Regia | A sealed formula-breaking duel against an AI that assays every batch against a locked code and never bluffs. |
Escape Rooms
Locked rooms you read your way out of before the timer — the final code sealed so the room can't move it.
| Cipherhouse | A five-lock cipher escape room whose exit code is sealed before you're locked in. |
|---|---|
| Sluice | Five machines, one chain, and an exit code sealed before the outer gate dropped. |
Word Games
Sealed word games — every answer is committed before the first card turns, so the AI can check you, never move it.
| The Word-Hoard | A sealed word-deduction game: five hidden words, six fixed clues each, and an AI that can only read them out. |
|---|---|
| The Counterfeit Lexicon | A sealed bluffing word game: seven obscure words, three definitions each, the true one hashed before you play. |
Text Adventure
Parser-style adventures with a fixed map and a real inventory — the door your AI describes is the door that's actually there.
| Meridian House | Eleven rooms of derelict glasshouse, a three-slot satchel, and thirty-four marks of light to get the tin out. |
|---|---|
| Ravensgate Deep | A parser text adventure in a disused underground transit complex: a fixed map on four levels, a counted lamp, and one way out — up the ventilation shaft. |
Survival
Ration what you carry against a clock that doesn't negotiate — the hazards are dealt from a published tape, not chosen to spare you.
| Bergschrund | A solo descent from 7,400 metres: ration daylight, warmth, food and a body that is already hurt, against hazards dealt from a public d20 tape. |
|---|---|
| Becalmed | An open-boat drift after a ship's fire: ration the water, choose sail or awning each morning, and get five people to a beach fourteen days west. |
Logic Puzzles
Deduction with one provable answer, sealed before release — the AI checks your reasoning instead of grading it kindly.
| The Ring of Five | A sealed logic grid: five bells, twelve true remarks, fifteen cells, and three smudges before the board is spoiled. |
|---|---|
| The Chairman's Book | A sealed ordering puzzle: seven variety turns, ten enquiries you pay for in minutes, and one submission the court never grades. |
Which assistant is best for playing games?
Once the card is in the chat, any of the three can run it; the card, not the model, is what keeps a game consistent. The difference is getting the card in. An app that opens the game's link fetches the card itself; one that can't takes the whole card pasted in, which works for every game except the few whose answers live in a sealed file on this site. Saves work the same everywhere. Because a game card is plain text, you're never locked to one app — you can save a game in ChatGPT and resume it in Claude. The tested compatibility matrix lays out exactly what we see in each app for prefill links, fetching the card, code-tool dice, and cross-app saves.
What makes these better than typing "play a game" into ChatGPT?
These are engineered game cards, not open prompts — the difference is what keeps the AI honest and consistent. A sealed solution means a mystery can't retrofit its own ending; a state ledger reprinted at the end of every reply means an AI game master stops forgetting what already happened, and a printed dice tape it reads in order means it can't quietly re-roll a result it didn't like; a written answer key — every puzzle's solution set down on the card before you load it — means a chess trainer can't confidently teach you a wrong move. Ad-hoc prompting drifts; a designed card holds its shape for a whole session.
Frequently asked questions
What games can I play with ChatGPT?
Original text games built for a language model's strengths: an AI-run tabletop RPG, a sealed murder mystery, social deduction against NPCs, fixed-answer chess puzzles, a horror one-shot, a hidden-fleet naval duel, a cipher escape room, and a sealed word game. A button on each game's page opens ChatGPT with the prompt already loaded; you send it and the game boots. 25 games across 11 shelves, each a card you open in a fresh chat.
Are these games free?
Yes — nothing to buy from us, no signup, no paywall. A game card is a text file on a CDN, so the catalog costs almost nothing to run: there's no upsell at the end of a case and no premium shelf behind the free one, and your saves stay in your own browser rather than on our end. The only thing a session spends is your own assistant's usage.
Do I need a paid subscription?
No. A free tier of ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini is enough to play. A paid plan gives you more usage and longer sessions, which helps with long campaigns, but it is not required for any game in the catalog. Dice are the one place a plan could matter, and the games remove it: an assistant that can run code may roll there, and every dice-driven card also ships a printed tape the AI has to read in order, so a roll in any tier is exactly as honest. You can regenerate that tape from its seed yourself on the verify page.
Do these work in Gemini too?
Yes, with one difference at the start. The game card is plain text, so it isn't tied to one app, but if Gemini can't open a game's link, paste the whole card instead (it's on the game's page under "No web access"). That works for every card except the few whose answers live in a sealed file on this site; those need an app that can open links. The compatibility matrix shows what each app currently does with links, cards and saves.