I started playing this new code breaking game for funsies, and it isn't as much like real code breaking because:
It's annoying as shit and plays ads even if you start guessing correct letters too quickly [punishing success]
It tells you immediately if you guess a letter wrong, has a 3 strike system and no way of notating theoretical letters so it's both harder and easier that actual code breaking in various ways [harder because any wrong guess or accidental button press means watching stupid fucking ads that I want to light on fire]
I'm not sure if having set themes to work from during events makes it leaps easier, or if not knowing common media and quotes makes it harder, but it giving you a few letters to start off def seems like easy mode, I want a dark mode and there is no dark mode... I mean the colour the app is very bright it's like all white.
But letter frequency and other 'techniques' still apply, like your most common letters are prone to being e t n and a, and there are ways to figure out whether a single letter word is I or A, etc...
Anyway I'm disabled so if I have a day where I can't do much but be on my phone, there's nothing to stop me from solving puzzles all day unless the brain fog is hitting hard
So there was an event with ranking like there are in a lot of games and as usual I expected not to even place, as usual, because I am doing this for fun and I don't tend to play mobile games all that much, I'm not even 'good' at them the way someone would be if they just did it daily... Like my grandmother does the daily newspaper puzzles way faster than me because she does them daily and that's what most mobile games are like for me when I play them, I just have no practice.
And then I accidentally won the tournament, in first place, out-lapping the second place person [score something like 2000 when other people were mostly under 300, I think second place was around 500-700 ish?], because I was solving the puzzles while watching supernatural and wanted to finish the -unrelated- seasonal event puzzles so that I could ignore the rest of the event for the remaining days without missing the puzzles, and -apparently- all the event puzzles count towards your ranking and not just the main ones on the app? It gave me a bunch of in-game tokens or keys or whatever I don't even think I'm going to use?? [sorry]... Imagine some new guy blows in and just smashes everyone out of the lead in 3 days right at the end of the challenge. The worst part is I don't even use the hints. I almost quit 20 times just because of the fucking ads [got distracted playing a few]. I would like to personally apologize the the people in second and third but especially 4th place who probably expected that ranking not to budge and probably actually cared and actually wanted the prize, if it makes you feel any better I have no life.
I've only been playing the game for 6 days. But like, I do real code breaking sometimes for fun?
My brain needs something to do that's of some higher value and challenge than fake code breaking games, but my only jobs right now are seasonal 'gathering' and resting. I can't even get into most of my hobbies until I get my apartment better put together.
This is me going stir crazy... Just solving puzzles all day until I want to resort to arson [against the ads]... I need something to chew on but media is not holding my interest [joy is stored in the nothing, I yearn]. Maybe I'll stream a game again soon. Maybe the next zero dawn game will go on sale. Maybe we'll play Mass Effect?
Anyway, I want to design a code breaking game that's better, and I have some suggestions for mobile ads to make them more effective and less annoying.
I've tried a number of simple mobile puzzle games I just uninstalled within a day because they were too fucking annoying. Like most of them are designed with inevitable fail states that force you to watch ads constantly to keep playing at all, making it so fucking tedious and obnoxious and unsatisfying. I think they expect you not to notice that it isn't a lack of skill responsible for you failing but is instead designed into the game. I think they are targeting mostly children and people who don't know better to make ad revenue.
When my life gets better put together I think I'm just going to develop mobile games for practice and make them cheap af or free and not have ads. I can code and do the graphics so why tf not. Like imagine decoding for days on end and getting to read something fun or solve a cool mystery with actual code breaking techniques and there's cool graphics and no annoying ads.
