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It was disorienting for maybe a moment, but I was very quick to get my head around that. As I began to understand more, I found myself more interested in the puzzles and wanting to know more rules and try harder puzzles. And this wasn't just for the fun of completing of the puzzle but to figure out what it was supposed to mean. I know the latter part is more on the story, but part of me almost feels like it should be part of the process. Like, if it existed in newspapers you get a word with so many letters you're trying to guess. To get the answer, you have to look at the picture formed by the CypherGrid, but first you gotta figure out the number puzzle first. These two separate puzzles feel like they need to go together.

I don't feel at all like it was hard to understand. If anything, I think my understanding of those games vastly sped up my understanding of this. It was actually easier to understand. With Picross, you have multiple numbers but you're trying to determine where the blocks go to fill those numbers. With CypherGrid, you're just looking for the first instance of any crossover of numbers adding to the sum. Once you hit it, the numbers are out of play. This feels so much like sudoku. So while it was Picross that taught me what filling in the boxes was to do, sudoku taught me how to figure out what boxes to fill. This is such an interesting cross those two puzzles which, I think, is why I think the word association thing should still be part of it. It does a picture, a number and a word puzzle all at once. I absolutely enjoyed it far more than Picross both just as a CypherGrid and with the word solving also part of it.

I think the number one that would be useful is that if a row or column only has one or less numbers remaining, the empty tiles should change colour to indicate they cannot be used anymore. If this sounds too much, then just a function to mark them off. To explain what I mean..

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So in this scenario, there are no usable numbers left in the one row. When this happens, the entire row is grayed out. In a manual check off system, the user would be able to right click to put an X over the square.

Considering that there are consequences on other game levels for placing incorrectly, I think the automatic system is better. Doing this would make it so that sort of mistake can't happen. The red X would just be more for situations where the only bad to happen is you don't solve the puzzle.