Locktale

This game is fun up until level 15. I had been playing with friends and one joked that "If you beat this on minimal hints you get a call from the CIA" Stylistically, this game is beautiful When the hints are good, the game is fun. But that's really it. I picked this game up as a way to learn interesting ciphers through breaking them/making them. This game required me to know what a dvorak keyboard was. Even when dropping down to detailed hints, there wasn't any real indication that that's what I was supposed to do. And my biggest issue, out of all things, is the Mixed Alphabet cipher in Level 15. The dev has so many words they could choose, why would they choose a word with double letters in it? Why would they have a key icon pointing to the Atbash cipher, one they already reused in a previous level, when trying to get me to use a specific word. From a cryptography stand point, this game is solid, you won't get the answers unless you know exactly what the dev was thinking. From a game design stand point, this sucks.

Nice educational game. Teach you basics of cryptography. Some of the hints should be made more clear and I believe dev should make an official walkthrough video to show the exact way of solving these puzzles. Although I 100%ed the game there are still one or two levels I don't understand. I just pass them by guessing and bruteforcing. Overall a good one and I will give it 7.5/10.

Honestly was excited at the start, since it seemed like a fun way to learn about ciphers. The problem for me came when at a certain point outside knowledge was expected or required. At some point it no longer was a puzzle game, but throwing your head against the wall trying to figure out what the cryptic hints mean until you brute force it and get a fun story about how the cipher that was just used was from some book and used as an alternative for morse code in there. All fun and games, but with the limited hints you can never figure that kind of stuff out, never mind how to decode it. I got halfway through the game before throwing in the towel. If I cannot reasonably figure something out from in-game hints and I have to use google instead, I'm not really playing a game at that point. So sadly not for me. But if that sounds like your kind of jam, give it a shot.

Finally finished the entire game!! It is well thought out, but the expectation to go to other levels is difficult to follow as getting there can distract you from the puzzles, especially the last level. I did the mystery achievements last with the keys and tended to overthink them, because they were more on the surface puzzles. The game gave me challenges that I love and a great sense of accomplishment when completed!

EDIT: Update on 2026-10-07 resolves the following problem by specifying the variant. Part of puzzle 46's detailed hint is EXTREMELY misleading, and eventually forces a brute-force search through all variants of the intended cipher until you chance on an intelligible message. Please encode the message using the variant that was used in previous levels or at least fix the on-screen image. That said, this is mostly a well-themed series of decryption exercises which barely functions as a game. Would not recommend at all to people looking for actual gameplay, but definitely would recommend to people who fondly reminisce about enciphering and deciphering messages for fun back in their schooldays.

You have to decode a series of messages, each encoded with some different cipher. Figuring out what cipher each message uses is part of the puzzle. The difficulty ramps up from mild to moderate to near-impossible. The game can be cumbersome to play, but I'm glad I played it. It's unique and creative, and I'm curious what the developer will make next.