AI-assisted Escape Room puzzle creation with free AI tools

ChatGPT won’t destroy Escape Rooms. AI won’t make puzzle designers obsolete. On the contrary – Artificial Intelligence helps to make the puzzle-creation process quicker and easier than before. It’s a tool, not a Skynet trying to ruin our hobby. And AI-assisted puzzle creation comes with some amazing features!

Omnipresent tool… for everything

When AI features are implemented in every online platform and piece of software (even Windows Notepad has an AI-powered “rewrite” option!), one can easily feel tired and/or afraid of this digital revolution. Talking to ER designers and browsing community groups, I can’t help but see the reluctance, or even aversion, regarding Artificial Intelligence within our industry.

“It kills creativity”, “there is no place for true passion anymore”, and “auto-generated games will destroy the market” – these points seem to be raised the most, and I don’t really understand why. First of all, an Escape Room game still has to be built and no one will invest money in a random AI-generated dud. Secondly, Escape Rooms are driven by players’ reviews, and a low-quality game will quickly be identified as such online. Who would risk that?

That said, I believe Artificial Intelligence will play a very important role in our industry – as a tool that enhances the puzzle-creating process and makes it even more exciting than it already is!

AI-assisted Escape Room puzzle creation

When I wrote about AI in Escape Rooms for the first time in 2021 (Can AI create Escape Room puzzles and scenarios?), I had no idea how quickly it would evolve, presenting Eminem-styled lyrics for a song about ER games, and asking about some vague ideas for puzzles and scenarios.

With a much better understanding of AI today, I know that the most efficient way to use AI is to give it a specific task within a project, and just talk to it. You can find inspiration for a puzzle, ask for details regarding the theme you want, generate voices, videos or even songs, and ask for possible problems… it can be the most resourceful assistant you can imagine, and you don’t need to pay a dime!

But before we can delegate these tasks, we need to learn what tools are available and what they can do. Below, I listed several free* options you can use right away, and keep in mind that it’s just the entry level to what the AI-assisted puzzle creation is capable of!

* Naturally, the free options will be limited but sufficient for the examples I used :)

1. Inspiration – ChatGPT, Grok

Inspiration can be found at any time, usually when you least expect it, but sometimes you just need to jumpstart it. In the past, when I needed an idea for a puzzle or two in a given theme, I browsed Pintereset and Google Images until I saw an image that started the creativity gears spinning. Today, I catch myself shortcutting this by asking AI for a list of theme-related keywords.

Make no mistake – I don’t just ask for a puzzle, but I facilitate the process of me coming up with one. For example, when thinking of a Viking-themed game, what immediately comes to mind are warriors with axes and shields, pillages, Norse gods, and the World Tree. I can go from there, going deeper into each topic, or just ask for a list of Norse gods with their attributes, e.g. powers, artifacts, and corresponding animals.

This can be the start of a puzzle related to the whole pantheon, or a series of puzzles, each one related to one of the gods. I see that most artifacts are weapons – maybe I can follow up with a list of weapons used by Vikings and go from there. It’s nothing groundbreaking or impossible to do without the AI, it just accelerates the process, letting me focus on the puzzles themselves.

2. Voice generation (text to speech) – ElevenLabs

Most basic text-to-speech options have been available for years in Google Translate and we have countless different voices across dozens of platforms, but now we can even create such a voice from a small sample of our own recordings, in any language. Not only that, you can control emotions of the voice.

Thanks to that, you can have all the audio logs, recordings, hints, and even artificial conversations heard on the other side of the wall in seconds. I worked with a client who created a short fake podcast with hints in NotebookLM by Google. My personal favorite platform for that, however, would be 11labs, which has “style exaggeration” value and many great voices available for free.

3. Song generation – Udio

Is voice generation not that impressive anymore? Try music! It’s amazing what AI songs are capable of – with or without lyrics provided by the user. All the different styles, like blues, pop, rap, jazz, country… sky is the limit! Now, as impressive as it is, what does it have to do with Escape Rooms?

Well, it’s a surprising way to give hints, if nothing else. I spent so many hours experimenting on Udio that I’m happy I found a way to include it in this list! I prepared a short lyrics for a song (written by yours truly but AI probably could do it even better) with hidden numbers that make a combination for a padlock. It goes like this:

Unlock the door
and explore
it all was made FOUR you
If you can’t solve the puzzle
take a FIVE, and bedazzled
you’ll be, so play with me
there are SEVEN different locks
and a door with TWO knobs
so put on your thinking hat and play

And now a few samples:

Sure, there are some strange pronunciations, and some distorted lines, but with a few attempts and detailed prompts, it can do wonders!

4. Video / talking avatar generation – HeyGen

Now, the videos are a whole different thing. Sure, you can create an avatar or even a real photo that AI will animate and make it speak whatever you need (which is usually kind of basic in free tools) but the biggest strength in my opinion is the translation options.

Seeing myself speaking all the different languages is fun on its own but making my polished intro video available in 5 language options? That shows that you care, especially if you have an Escape Room in a city often visited by tourists.

5. Translating puzzle ideas to electronics – our own model based on ChatGPT

The last free tool is a kind of self-promotion, but also an incredible example of what a free AI tool can achieve. We basically fed the ChatGPT information on every piece of electronics we have at Escape Room Supplier. Then, we talked with it for a bit, teaching it how to create a working puzzle on our tech (which luckily is pretty easy so it worked flawlessly), and gave a few examples of possible puzzles.

What we got (and what I’m proud to share) is a specialized chat for anyone to use that will help you pick the right electronics, if you describe your puzzle idea to it in detail. It may not be 100% helpful with more complex puzzles (but I am, so contact me at daniel@escaperoomsupplier.com :D), yet it makes for a great tool. While AI will “translate” your ideas to our electronics, you can focus on the next puzzles. Win-win situation!

Use ERS tech puzzle designer

Future of AI in Escape Rooms

The selection of AI tools will only grow larger and there are probably many different ones that I haven’t found yet or did not see how they could be used in Escape Rooms.

Game Master controlled by AI comes to mind and I tried to experiment with that although even when I feed the ChatGPT with all the puzzles in one of the games we have, it has problems giving hints. And even if it could do that, a live Game Master will always be essential for the safety of players.

I’d like to think that AI could help with playtesting new puzzles and games, although I tried that too, and even when I asked about a puzzle and what could go wrong or be misunderstood, it still cannot replace the real testers.

As for creating puzzles from scratch, I believe the creativity is not at risk there. Sure, Artificial intelligence can deepsearch all the ER games available online, and even popular puzzle video games, copy some stuff or change it enough so they seem like new ones, but there are always real players that play it and share their opinions.

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All in all, Artificial Intelligence is a tool, and while it can be harmful – or rather used in a morally reprehensible – way, it can be also a great help. Like a knife. The sooner we learn how to use it effectively, the more we can achieve.