Haunted High-Rise

Thirteen floors. One very unusual opening night.

E ElevatorS Stairs Obstacle

0:00building time

Rooms waiting

Choose a room, then tap an empty map square to place it.

Your night shift
0Moves
0Returns
0Tests
0Hints

Hollow House · A puzzle for curious minds

Your night shift
starts here.

The doors have been shut for a hundred years. Tonight, Hollow House’s wonderfully peculiar residents return for the Midnight Ball.

Give every resident a room and light all 13 floors to open the rooftop celebration.

  1. Give the haunts a home.Drag rooms from “Rooms waiting,” or select one and tap a square. Rotate and reflect to find a fit.
  2. Keep a corridor open.Connect the elevator and stairs. The keeper starts at the elevator on odd floors and the stairs on even floors. Rooms and obstacles block the way.
  3. Take a test walk.Place every room, then test your floor. A fright means rearrange and try again. Stuck? Ask for a hint.
Small rooms. Big thinking.

Practice spatial reasoning, area, transformations, and testing ideas. Suggested for grades 3–8, with difficulty and support adjusted to the player.

1 · Choose your keeper
2 · Choose your difficulty

First visit? Cozy gives you room to learn. Curious and Cursed offer a tougher night shift.

A code recreates the same puzzles for a new playthrough. Once you start, find yours under My hotel. Your layouts and progress save automatically in this browser.

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Choose your keeper, then start your night shift.

For parents

A little haunting.
A lot of thinking.

Haunted High-Rise gives children a reason to plan, try an idea, and revise it. The challenge is to fit every room while leaving a corridor the keeper can actually walk.

What children practice

Find their starting point

Our suggested audience is grades 3–8; this is a starting recommendation, rather than a tested age cutoff. Begin with Cozy, especially for younger players. Older or more confident players can try Curious or Cursed. Hints, calmer motion, and sound controls let you adjust the experience.

Play beside them

Try asking: “What will change if you turn this room?” “How many squares does it cover?” or “Where did the keeper get stuck?” Invite them to explain a choice before offering a solution.

Come back to their hotel

Progress saves automatically in the same browser on the same device. Reopen the game there to continue. Under My hotel → Visit saved floors, explore completed layouts and records. Clearing browser data or using private browsing can remove that saved progress.

Copy the replay code from My hotel to share the same puzzles or start them again. It does not include your child’s placements or completed floors. To use one, choose New tower, enter it in Replay code, then start. Starting a new tower replaces the current local save.

For teachers

Build. Test. Explain. Revise.

A suggested puzzle activity for grades 3–8, adaptable through difficulty, hints, and partner discussion. The game provides a design problem; your questions and students’ evidence make the educational connection explicit.

Learning goals

A suggested 15–20 minute activity

For route predictions, choose Settings → Route trail → After a test. You can also switch Show timer off to focus on explanations; building time is still recorded.

  1. Set the challenge. Give pairs the same replay code and floor. Agree on criteria: all rooms placed, no overlaps, and a walkable corridor.
  2. Plan and test. Have students predict their keeper’s route, then inspect. Record what happened and where a route failed.
  3. Revise with evidence. Change one placement where possible, keep the floor and difficulty the same, and test again. Record the change and its effect.
  4. Compare and explain. Revisit a completed floor and discuss different layouts. Ask students to support a choice with square counts, transformations, or test observations.

Use My hotel to copy the code and Visit saved floors to review layouts. Codes share puzzle conditions, not student progress. Students should keep their original browser/device to revisit their own saved work. Choosing New tower starts a new local save.

Mathematics connections

Grade 3 · 3.MD.C.5–6 and 3.MD.C.7.d: connect the grid to square-unit area, counting squares, and adding areas of non-overlapping parts. Ask students to count and explain rather than relying only on the displayed metric.

Grade 8 · 8.G.A.1–2: use room movements to discuss transformations and congruence. Extend with explanations of what is preserved; the game does not assess every part of these standards.

Potential NGSS connections

With guided design comparisons and recorded testing, this activity can support elementary engineering practices:

These are classroom connections, not a claim that playing alone fulfills an NGSS performance expectation. Add predictions, controlled comparisons, and student explanations to make the practice visible.

Your Hollow House

Keep the address.
Come back to the rooms.

This code recreates your hotel’s puzzles and difficulty. It does not contain your placed rooms, records, or progress.

Continue your saved hotel

Just reopen this game in the same browser on the same device. Your latest floor and completed layouts save automatically. Clearing browser data or playing privately can remove that save.

Replay or share the puzzles

Copy the code above. Choose New tower → Replay code, paste it, then start. The puzzles begin again at floor 1, even on another device. Starting a new tower replaces that browser’s current saved hotel.

A home for every haunt.

Fit all the rooms, then test your floor. Your caretaker walks from the elevator to the stairs on odd floors, then from the stairs to the elevator on even floors. Their positions stay fixed within your hotel. Rooms and fixed obstacles block walking; diagonal steps do not count.

Keyboard: select a room button, focus the board, use arrows and Enter. With no room selected, Enter selects the room under the cursor. R rotates, F reflects, Delete returns, Escape cancels. Ctrl/⌘ Z recovers a recent edit.

The numbers: occupied area includes rooms and obstacles. Building time pauses during dialogs, inspections, floor visits, and when this tab is hidden. A move means repositioning a room already on the board; a return means sending one back.

Room walls and doors: doors guide where the keeper approaches a blocked room during a test. Every square in a room still blocks the corridor, including its doorway. If a door cannot be reached, the keeper stops outside the wall.

Why it matters: spatial reasoning, area, transformations, composition, and route planning—without a single quiz.

Set the atmosphere.

Sound effects

Footsteps, furnishings, frights and flourishes.

Background music

A quiet, generated music-box waltz.

Calmer motion

Still scenery and shorter walkthroughs.

After a test also hides the route result until you test. Rearranging rooms makes that result out of date.

Show timer

Time is recorded even when hidden.

Start this floor again?

Every room returns to the tray. Your timer and inspection count keep running, and placed rooms count as tray returns. A fresh timed retry is available after completing the floor.

Your illuminated address.

Visit a finished floor to see its layout, replay its inspection, or challenge your own record.

The Midnight Ball is open!

Every resident has a room. Every corridor has passed inspection. Hollow House is alive again—and you built it.

Master of the Macabre