Ah. Enjoying the game so far. Will crack the ciphers with my family tomorrow. Maybe even put my friends to it.
Can you describe endless mode please. I'm a bit concerned that this game may be over too quickly to warrant the price, although there are many on here that love this game.
Endless mode consists of consecutive rounds. Each round goes to 100, so the first round is 0-100, the second round from 100-200 and so on. Each round adds semi-randomly selected new circles to the field and thus increases the difficulty. It's a strange combination of puzzle and arcade game.
Enjoying this game. I beat the 100 levels and solved all but two of the ciphers. I'm stuck on the two with no spaces. Not sure how to approach them. The double "H" in the fourth one is stumping me. Will just have to think on it some more before I dig into the hints on here.
Really enjoyed this game, but I had to delete it from my phone. Puzzle 21 got too frustrating. I'll have to play the rest once I get an iPad (whenever that is). It is a great little game, just need a bigger screen to play it on.
Yeah I completed the game! Level 100 really was an exercise in patience combined with a touch of luck. Now to get those achievements in the endless mode
I realize Im a couple days late replying to this, but this is one of the classiest responses I have ever seen from a game dev to critisism. Seriously.
First, let me say I think this game is seriously fantastic. I really hope that the obvious hard work the devs put into this pays off. But I'm not sure how I feel about the messages. This is mostly for the devs, but I'm interested to see how everyone else feels about this. Maybe it's just a matter of taste, but I tend to prefer puzzles that are self-contained - all the elements needed to solve the puzzle are present within the puzzle. This is how the main levels are set up (perfectly), and so I believed the whole game would operate by this logic. The first two messages also stuck to this logic, but the third one was a brick wall. I was banging my head against this wall for a while before I checked this thread and learned that the only way I could solve this message and the others that followed was to research ciphers and cryptology (thanks to kamikaze28, and the other folks that helped). That was pretty disappointing. I don't mean to sound ungrateful or unnecessarily critical, but you guys seem to appreciate thoughtful criticism, so take it for what it's worth. Ciphers that require specialized knowledge just don't seem to jibe with the rest of the game for me. I guess it was just a bummer to realize that it would be impossible (or highly, highly improbable) for me to complete the game on my own. It doesn't ruin the game for me by any means, it just lessens that feeling of satisfaction we all yearn for when we sit down to play a game. Regardless, the game is still awesome, and I thank you guys for making it.
I get your point and to be honest when I found out how the last message I was missing (#6) worked, two thoughts came into my head: 1. Thank god I stumbled across the necessary cipher while doing the others or I would have never gotten the idea to try it. 2. How on earth would an average user get that? Spoiler I did, however, like the fact that some clues to the ciphers were hidden in the achievement icons - too bad though that the achievements cannot be viewed in game and I always had to switch to Game Center. Nevertheless, the decryptions of the messages are kind of related and as you can surely agree, they are progressively more tricky to solve. Spoiler I am of the opinion that anyone who is motivated enough can get the substitution ciphers and the caesar cipher. The others ... demand more creativity if you do not feel inclined to delve into ancient cryptography. Semi-related side note: similar to your argument of being required to know cryptography to solve the ciphers one could also argue that you need a rudimentary understanding of physics and inelastic collisions to solve the main levels. I am aware that human beings are usually equipped with an intuitive understanding of that whereas cryptography is not that widely entertained. Nevertheless interesting to think about.
I agree with this assessment. I know next to nothing about cryptography, but was able to solve all but two of them. I'm glad I eventually looked at hints for those two, though, because I never would have gotten them. I can't decide if that lessened the experience for me or not. On one hand, I like that they included challenging elements that only those dedicated to figuring them out, and possibly arming themselves with additional knowledge, could hope to solve. It's a nice break from the one-size-fits-all instant gratification gameplay that casual games usually employ. However, it also kind of bummed me out that I was working for so long to solve things I simply didn't have the prior knowledge to handle, and made me feel a bit defeated when I eventually looked at the hints.
Has anyone worked out what the 27th achievement is yet? There's 10 for unlocking the ciphers, 10 for solving them, one for 100 levels complete and 5 related to endless mode. Is there another secret hidden away that no one's unlocked yet?
Kamikaze28 and Hobbsicle, I totally agree with you both. I definitely don't want to sound like I'm complaining. I applaud the ambition and audacity of the devs for going as far as they did. I guess the distinction is this - intellectually, I'm impressed, but emotionally, a tiny bit bummed. Maybe it's about managing expectations - on the part of both the user and the dev. I felt I was led to expect consistent logic (self-contained puzzles), so when the game changed on me, I was clueless. But there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not even saying I wish it were made differently, I'm only trying to explain the reaction I had to the game, in the hopes that it may help the devs in one way or another. And I'm sure glad to hear I wasn't the only one who felt this way! Also, as to your side note Kamikaze28, there is so much we take for granted when it comes to games, and that hadn't even occurred to me. You could also argue that the game can actually teach you about physics/collisions. But I'm not sure you could say that about the ciphers.
