Originally published as an Advisory Hour Substack post on 2026-10-31. This first-party site copy preserves the text, localizes public supporting media, and connects the record to its project trail.
Original post
The next machine in TiltLab is THE KHUFU KEY. I thought for this one I’d try bringing back local video generation to see if I couldn’t spice up the mix.
Back in August I wrote about an AI-driven reconstruction of the Khufu pyramid. Khufu: Beneath the Stone is the exhibit in GameLab. It has the Giza plateau over its real terrain, the three pyramids built course by course, the chambers inside the Great Pyramid as Petrie surveyed them, the voids the muon surveys found, and, clearly labeled, the chambers a disputed radar reading puts under the plateau.
This pinball machine stands inside it.
It plays like an adventure film. You’re the expedition, a rival group called the Consortium is digging beside you, and the pinball machine is the key every wall in the pyramid has been waiting for.
Each chamber is a lock. Your shots turn the key, and when one opens, the whole cabinet moves on to the next place.
Which means the room doesn’t stay where I put it.
There are nine stops. You start on the plateau at sundown, in a sandstorm that piles sand on the table. Then you go down through the Pit, the Queen’s Chamber with its stone doors, the Grand Gallery with a boulder coming down the middle, and the King’s Chamber, where the coffin is not empty. In the Big Void, a wall of glyphs plays a combination you have to shoot in order.
Halfway down, you come back out onto the plateau in 2560 BC, on the night Orion lines up. The Great Pyramid stands whole again, and every jackpot in the capstone multiball carries the capstone higher up the north face. After that, you head down into the disputed chambers under the plateau to turn the key.
The relics are this machine’s own: the capstone, the coffin, the jackal, the boulder, the scarab and the core. They’re built in Blender from code, and the stone ones use the exhibit’s stone. The music is Lazarus Array’s I Swear I Had a Pulse, from MusicLab, with a track for each chamber.
It’s eleven machines now, and each one starts from the last. This one takes its room from MUD TRUCK ‘99, its sand from Margin Aces’ drag zones, and its typewritten field notes from Black Budget Bird.
Connected work
- Play The Khufu Key: Each chamber is a lock. Your shots turn the key.
- About the machine: Nine stops, and the cabinet moves on to the next place.
- Khufu: Beneath the Stone: The exhibit in GameLab that the pinball machine stands inside.