I think you could fix the problem of getting stuck with just some ui changes. I would have made the cryptic_hash always be visible and in exactly the same spot. That would make it much easier to detect something is going on in them. You may also want to introduce a way to look at previous sent requests/received hashes, so that the player can read back if it took them a little while to figure out what is going on. I do think it will stay a bit of a niche game, even with a better UI. That's not a bad thing though, you don't have to make something that caters to everyone, and I enjoyed the game :)