Poems & Codes Reviews

Still a very smoothly implemented game, but not nearly as good as its predecessor. One of Prose & Codes strengths is in the sheer variety of texts puzzles are drawn from. There are some repeated authors, but no two puzzles are from the same work. In contrast, Poems & Codes features up to 12 puzzles in a row all taken from the same poem. The repetition is tedious and makes the puzzles too simple, and the small number of total poets represented make the categories feel as samey as the puzzles within them. The game also adds some features to make the solving experience easier, such as defaulting to correct capitalization instead of all-caps, which feel wholly unnecessary given how many clues are included just from the repeating verses from stanza to stanza and puzzle to puzzle. The frustrating thing is how easy it is to imagine a version of this as solid as Prose & Codes—include more total poets overall and no more than one puzzle per poem, and the experience would be much more similar in both difficulty and novelty. That would also allow the use of shorter forms, like haiku, since each poem wouldn’t have to field a fifth or more of its category’s content. I don’t regret trying it at all, but unless you’re desperate for more after finishing Prose & Codes, give this one a pass.