Large Language Murder

One phone goes round the table. Everybody answers the same one-word prompt.

So does an AI.

Do you like AI? You will love this game. Do you hate AI? You will love this game.

The rule is what makes it work: one to six words, none longer than six letters. Small enough that clever writing stops being a giveaway, big enough to be funny. COFFEE. MIDNIGHT. DENTIST. SOCK. Everybody writes, nobody sees anybody else's answer, and the cards come out shuffled.

Now vote. Which one of these did a person not write?

SCORING IS THE ARGUMENT

Every vote your answer collects is a point — being mistaken for the AI pays. Catching it pays more, and pays only you. So the table splits between blending in and hunting, and one answer can do both.

First past the line wins, and you have to get there alone.

ONE TO SIXTEEN PLAYERS, ONE DEVICE

No accounts, no sign-in, nothing to set up. The phone goes hand to hand and everybody types on the same keyboard. Nobody's answer is readable until the last person has finished — built in, not left to good manners. On your own, it is HIDE below.

Up to eight AIs can sit at the table, not just one. With three in a nine-card round, "the odd one out" stops being a useful question.

OR EVERYBODY ON THEIR OWN PHONE

One screen is the stage, the phones are the controllers, and on the same Wi-Fi it needs no internet. If your players are somewhere else, open the game over the internet and they join by typing four letters.

TWO HUNTS, AND THEY ARE OPPOSITES

SEEK is the game above: the humans vote, hunting the card no person wrote. HIDE turns it round — you are the only person in the room, the AIs are the jury, and they are hunting you. Every juror that names you costs a hit point; when they run out, so do you.

BLIND is the fair one: whoever is hunted answers cold, and nobody reads anybody. PEEK always favours the hunted — in SEEK the AI reads the table first, in HIDE you read every AI answer first. Chosen on the title screen, in front of everybody.

HIDE and PEEK need a live AI, so they need a key of your own.

WORD GROUPS

Fifteen of them, and you can tick more than one. EVERYDAY is the house deck. NATURE, SPORTS, GHOSTS, HUMOR, FAMOUS, SPACE and AMERICANA bring their own words, seven more come from the Haunted Space Hotel universe, and RANDOM deals from all fifteen at once. An evocative word is the AI's best register; a mundane one is where a person wins, because a person has an actual sock drawer.

WHAT IS FREE AND WHAT IS NOT

EVERYDAY is free forever, and it is a complete game, not a demo that stops: eighty-two prompt words, every player and AI count, and joining somebody else's game.

One payment unlocks the other fourteen word groups, RANDOM, and hosting a game on everybody's phones. A single permanent purchase — no currency, no subscription, nothing else to buy, ever — and it comes back free on any device you sign in to. One person at the table buying it is enough: everybody else joins on the free app and plays whatever that table plays.

MADE WITH AI, ON PURPOSE, AND ONLY HERE

Every other game we make is signed "100% Designed by Humans". Not this one: the opponent here is a real language model. The words it plays offline were written by one, chosen by us. The artwork on this page was made with AI. Being shy about that would be a strange way to sell a game about catching an AI.

You need no key to play: the AI answers from thousands of lines inside the app, and most tables never switch it on. For a live model, switch it on and supply your own key.

No adverts, of any kind, ever, and we collect nothing about you. With a live model on, what leaves the device is the prompt word and the answers on the table — nothing else, and nothing to us. Playing over the internet passes through a relay we run that keeps none of it.

Made by humans and machines, together, at Haunted Space Hotel Studios.