Uncracked City, detective game where you question LLM suspects that lie
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To give you some context on the project. I'm a solo founder and I use AI heavily in my work. The idea came from wanting players to discover cities. Each city has its own history, so every case is set in a real city with real public places. The crime and the people are on other hand invented. The part that I care most is the playable aspect of the game, a model plays the detective and must solve the case before it goes live.As of today: it's free on Android, the iOS version is still waiting to be reviewed by Apple. It's available in six popular languages, but adding more languages is just a matter of time and demand.My long term vision if it takes off: weekly cases, private parties like a team-building escape game, an MCP so a game master can build their own scenario from ChatGPT or Claude, and maybe tourism offices since players travel the world.
HN · launched Nov 3, 2026 · 127 upvotes (top 8%) · 0 views
Niche: ai interactive fiction and rpg platforms · 63 launches, 5 in the last 7 days ▼ -55% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- Content generation
- B2C
- AI-native
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 63 launches in ai interactive fiction and rpg platforms →
Could you build this?
Partial The app shell, dialogue UI, and LLM-driven suspect conversations are vibe-codeable, but the cases need carefully written mysteries with consistent clues, lies, and real-place details across many cities and six languages.
What it would actually take: The stack is a mobile app (React Native or Flutter) with an LLM backend for suspect dialogue, speech-to-text and text-to-speech, and a structured case-state engine that tracks which clues and statements are true. The hard parts are the case-writing pipeline, which needs a human writer or editor to keep lies, clues, and timelines consistent, and the real-world place data tied to each city. Quality multilingual voice and game-balance testing also need a designer and playtesting.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego
Concerns raised: LLM suspects leak hidden information, AI-generated artwork and writing feel like slop, Replies may be AI-generated, Device ID collection privacy, Trailer quality
Feature requests: On-device LLM instead of datacenter, Web version, Disclose that suspects are LLM-played, Fix returning to locations
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 162 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #12 of 163 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 370 days after the earliest competitor.
- Break the Suspect · ph · 2026-11-03 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Daily Case — A mystery a day · ph · 2026-10-06 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- SideQuest · Your city is now a game · ph · 2026-10-03 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Somatry: Cold Case Mystery · ph · 2026-10-22 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Shepit · ph · 2026-11-12 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- AI agents play SimCity through a REST API · hn · 2026-02-09 · 216 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- An addictive phone game about phone addiction · hn · 2026-05-11 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Peeked · ph · 2026-10-27 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.41
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