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.
- Players
- 1
- Length
- 40–55 min
- Rated
- All ages
- Version
- 1.2.0
- Updated
Works with ChatGPT · Claude · Gemini. Free, no signup.
Opens ChatGPT or Claude with the play prompt ready; press send if it hasn't started. Same link on your phone as on your desktop. Another app? Copy the play prompt into it, or, if it can't open links, copy the full game card below. What works where.
No web access, or want it as an installed app?
The game card is the entire game, about 13k characters: every scene and rule, and the answers the AI referees from. Paste it into an assistant that can't open links, without reading it first: it gives the game away. 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.
Cipherhouse is a five-lock cipher escape room whose exit code is sealed before you're locked in. Solo, 40–55 min a run, free to play inside ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. No signup and nothing to install: open it in your assistant, paste the play prompt into another, or paste the whole card where links don't open.
How to start
- Open it in your AI. Tap Open in ChatGPT or Open in Claude, and press send, or paste the play prompt into any assistant that can open links. No paid plan required.
- The game loads. The house reads you the seal, a SHA-256 hash of the escape code fixed before release, and the street door locks behind you.
- 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 revealed answer into aigamecards.com/verify, which recomputes the hash in your browser.
Questions
- Can ChatGPT actually run an escape room?
- Yes — the decoding is yours, and the house only holds the answer key. Merrit Vane, the dead cryptographer whose house this is, 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 door locked, and the house reads you that hash as the candle is lit. Whatever code you speak at the 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.