Play attempt
Cypherist's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Thematic Relevance | #2 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Historical Accuracy | #4 | 3.625 | 3.625 |
| Graphics | #4 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Overall | #5 | 2.875 | 2.875 |
| Gameplay | #8 | 2.250 | 2.250 |
| Audio | #9 | 2.125 | 2.125 |
Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Historical Accuracy
https://web.archive.org/web/20130909210347/http://www.nrs.bg/za-nas/istoriya
https://www.mtc.government.bg/archive/page.php?category=144&id=1874
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilist_cipher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Bazarov
https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%82_%D1%81%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%89%D1%83_%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%84%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%B8_%D1%83%D0%B1%D0%B8%D0%B9%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%A5%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE_%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%B2
Thematic Relevance
I looked for the exact date bulgarian secret service were officially enstated, which is apparently december 1891 by an order of King Ferdinand. The action of the game takes place earlier that year on unofficial business. I used a historic cypher called the nihilist cypher, as I'm sure cyphers were quite imporant pre-WW1 for this line of work. I took some creative liberty with moving the nihilist cypher to bulgarian secret ops, but it seems plausible enough under the veil of secrecy. I think it's interesting trying to reimagine how working on numbers with pen and paper must have felt.
Disclaimers
Used music/soundfx pre-made assets:
https://happysoulmusic.com/audio/wooden-fire-fire_sound_effects-mp3/
https://opengameart.org/content/rpg-sound-pack
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canzonetta_uit_Sans_Famille.mid
https://godotengine.org/asset-library/asset/1667
https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/4542
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Comments
Deciphering messages are hard in this game, but that’s the point.
I was triumphant in managing to decipher the first few messages!
Lovely pixel art, and I absolutely love the burning animation for notes.
The tutorial was immensely helpful, and while it made me feel a bit stupid to manage what looked like a simple series of steps (once I understood what to do),
it was definitely interesting. the attention to detail in this one is inspiring. The mouse pointer design was a nice touch, among many!
Thanks for participating in HAGJ9!
Thank you so much for playing and for hosting the jam! I'll see if I can do something about this pesky difficulty curve I keep hearing about!
This was an interesting encryption game. The instructions where very obtuse and we spent ages trying to figure out what to do before finding the video you posted on the main page. Good entry none the less.
I don't get the gameplay at all but burning papers is very satisfying. The concept is amazing though, seems like it could be something special with a little more polish.