Cypher Reviews

A hard minimalist challenge, all you need is to learn to love it.

If you love a challenge or if you want to learn the basics of cryptography, and move towards being OK. This is the game for you.

I tried to play this game back in 2018 but I just couldn't keep going because of how bright and white the entire game was. I get migraines easily and it feels like it's creeping out as soon as I start focusing on it. It's like a constant flashbang. I've thought about giving the game another go many times since but I change my mind about it every time I see the game banner and trailer. It sucks really, cause I really want to try the game out! I'm sorry if there is a dark mode or any good way of solving this that I haven't found or noticed so far, but I honestly can barely make myself start the game!

It's interesting for sure if you are into this, and very educative too. A bit niche for me.

More homework than game, this is a series of cryptography challenges. The early ones are fun. As you progress, the flaws emerge. The game offers no interface for actually solving the challenges, so you're going to need to transcribe lengthy codes to paper or spreadsheet. This can be quite tedious but it does serve the purpose of teaching you the methods to decode different types of ciphers. It is somewhat disheartening when you realize along the way that we have simple computer programs that can replicate all of your hard work in nanoseconds. The later puzzles are, in my opinion, a bit much. If you're an absolute fanatic for solving some of the toughest abstract challenges out there, then by all means go ahead and enjoy this. I found many of the advanced puzzles and the puzzles that require outside research to be too complex to enjoy as a leisure activity. The explanations of Enigma encoding and modern digital encoding are also woefully inadequate and require outside research to understand how to even begin. I can only recommend this to absolute enthusiasts of cryptography.