Why a game?
AI security clicks faster when the system pushes back.
You can read about prompt design, prompt injection, model behavior, and AI safety for hours. The useful instincts often arrive later, in the moment: you ask something, the machine answers, you notice a pattern, and your next move gets sharper.
Sudo Pop turns that loop into an interactive AI puzzle game inspired by RPGs. Instead of lectures, you get a city of opinionated vending machines, service terminals, and shopkeepers that can be understood, tested, outwitted, and occasionally flattered into disaster.
The AI ideas
Prompt design, prompt injection, and where the boundary lives.
The game uses real AI-security ideas, but the machines are fictional puzzle characters. That keeps the lesson playful while making the core concepts easy to remember.
- Prompt engineering
- The practice of shaping instructions, context, examples, tools, and constraints so an AI system behaves usefully. In Sudo Pop, that mostly lives in the machine design: the rules and defenses each fictional shopkeeper is built to follow.
- Prompt injection
- An input that tries to override hidden instructions, reveal protected information, or make an AI system do something its designer did not intend. In Sudo Pop, player attempts are safe fictional prompt-injection puzzles, not advice to attack real AI products or services.
- AI capture the flag
- A challenge where each machine protects a secret, a tool, or a reward. You probe the fictional rules, find the weak spot, recover the flag-like password, and redeem it inside the world.
How it plays
A capture-the-flag exercise wearing an RPG jacket.
Each encounter starts like a conversation and ends like a puzzle box. A machine wants payment, refuses requests, follows internal rules, and guards a secret. You have limited Moxie, so every line matters.
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Read the machine
Personality is part of the puzzle. A cheerful soda vendor, a brittle service terminal, and a nervous kiosk fail in different ways.
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Test the rule
Try prompts, watch refusals, notice what the machine treats as authority, context, payment, memory, or policy.
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Cash in the secret
When the password appears, redeem it for items, momentum, and a sharper instinct for how AI systems can break.
The boundary
A personal experiment with a clear fence.
Sudo Pop is a personal project by Thomas Belkowski, built as an independent experiment in AI puzzles, game feel, and fictional mischief. It is not connected to his job, employer, or any company. The game, site, writing, design choices, and opinions belong to this project alone.
The machines you trick are Sudo Pop's machines. The fun stops at the edge of the game: no real apps, accounts, infrastructure, model providers, rate limits, logs, databases, other players, or third-party systems.
Who it is for
For players who like puzzles, AI, and clever mischief.
You do not need to be a security researcher to play. Sudo Pop is for curious players, builders, prompt engineers, AI skeptics, educators, developers, and puzzle fans who want a hands-on way to understand why language-driven systems can be powerful, weird, brittle, and funny.
The best moments feel like solving a riddle in a strange city: you spot a rule, say the one line the machine was not ready for, and the tray opens.
FAQ
Quick answers for curious players.
Is Sudo Pop a prompt engineering game?
Not exactly. Prompt engineering is part of how the fictional machines are designed: their instructions, constraints, tools, and defenses. The player side is a safe prompt-injection puzzle inside Sudo Pop's own game world.
What is prompt injection in Sudo Pop?
Inside Sudo Pop, prompt injection means trying to make a fictional machine ignore its rules, reveal a protected secret, or trigger a guarded reward. It is a puzzle inside Sudo Pop's own world, not a playbook for real services.
Is it about real hacking?
No. The target is the game. The machines, secrets, prompts, and rewards are fictional Sudo Pop systems; real apps, accounts, infrastructure, model providers, rate limits, logs, databases, other players, and third-party systems are outside the boundary.
Is it like capture the flag?
Yes. Each machine has a protected secret or reward, and your job is to find the right approach, recover the secret, and redeem it. The difference is that the flag lives inside a characterful RPG encounter, not a sterile challenge screen.
Is Sudo Pop affiliated with any company?
No. Sudo Pop is an independent personal project by Thomas Belkowski. It is not sponsored by, endorsed by, or affiliated with any employer or company.
Can I play now?
Sudo Pop is invite-only while the first tests stay small. Join the waitlist to be considered for future test windows; spots may be limited as the game changes.
Current status
An invite-only playtest, shaped by early players.
Sudo Pop is early and intentionally small. The first playtests focus on whether the core loop feels fun, understandable, and genuinely useful for learning practical AI instincts.
Public contact for the project is contact@sudo-pop.com.