Cipher Zero

PC, Mac

I’m trying to decide if a puzzle game where the rules are yours to fathom as you play is far easier or far harder to write about. Usually, when I find a logic puzzle game I’m loving, I have to bend language into moebius strips in my attempt to explain the overtly visual concepts. But this time, I’m not allowed! The entire point of the very excellent Cipher Zero is that you do not know what the game is about when you start playing. To even give you a hint would be to break the game.

So what shall we talk about instead? Have you seen The Fall of the House of Usher? I just finished it, and oh my goodness, I think it might be Flanagan’s best. Oh, and have you had the coffee at the Deli in Keynsham? It’s the best!

No, wait, I should probably try a bit harder.

Cipher Zero began life as a Ludum Dare entry in 2019, that’s blossomed into a colossal project. It’s a logic puzzle game, and as such you need to fill in tiles in a grid, but which tiles you need to fill in is yours to fathom, understood through experimentation and intuition. At the very start of the game, you’ll have a grid with certain marks on it, and need to work out what those marks mean. Once you figure that out, you can then solve a series of increasingly trickier versions of the same, right up until it suddenly introduces a new marker. Perhaps there are dots, and now a row has a line next to it. Or what if the dot is inside a tile, rather than at the top of a column? And then what do those diamonds mean? And what if a tile has two dots next to one with three?

This is all so very splendid. I’m just stating that as a fact. Usually, games like this–think Picross or Nurikabe or what have you–have an established set of rules, and then require you to interpret them in ever-more complex ways. But here, it removes the established part, and asks you to figure that step out too. When you click to say you think you’ve solved a puzzle, it sort of marks your work, the grid fizzing and flickering as it works through all the relevant markers and, briefly X-ing any that are incorrect. If they’re all correct, then boom, you’re onto the next puzzle. And you can take as many tries as you need, with no penalties, no tiresome star ratings, just the understanding that you’re figuring this out as you go along.

On top of some superbly smart puzzle design–the sort that makes me get all worried in my own head that I’d never be capable of creating something like this–Cipher Zero is also absolutely beautifully presented. The level selection screens are incredible, animated scenes of stunning polygonal art, trains occasionally running through, triangular leaves floating on the breeze, with gorgeous backgrounds of hills and buildings and lakes. Pick a level and the current section’s themes are then rendered in a muted background colour, the trains still occasionally going through, but with the tiled puzzles front and centre, grey at first but then filled with colour as you progress.

My favourite thing writing this is I can absolutely include screenshots of even solved puzzles, but without worrying that I’m spoiling anything, given how esoteric it all is without the context of prior progression. A super-smart person might be able to fathom some of the implied rules from them, but then, that’s the whole point of the game in the first place.

There is one enormous issue. The game has no hint system, and no way to bypass a puzzle if you’re stuck. Often, games of this nature will open up the next two or three puzzles at any point, letting you skip slightly ahead if you’re flummoxed and still able to play. That’s not the case here, and so if one puzzle has you utterly stumped (and there are occasional moments where a puzzle mid-run of a particular section is far harder than the next few that follow) you’re stuffed. That seems a significant oversight.

However, since I was playing this a week or so ago, there is finally someone who’s uploaded a video with solutions, so there is at least now a way to keep progressing.

I’m so impressed with Cipher Zero, and how much extra work has gone into every tiny element of its presentation, let alone the brilliance of the puzzle design. It’s so rewarding to figure out what a new symbol means, and then to solve ever more complex puzzles as it re-introduces old rules into the new. There are an extraordinary 373 levels in total, and I’m just a fraction through that right now. And, honestly, I’d just gotten completely stuck–I’m so pleased I can scrub that video and figure out progression now.

• Zapdot
• Steam
• £13/$15/€15
• Official Site

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