So far a lot of these posts have been just information on the history of cryptography, which is due to the fact, that I’ve been in my research phase for a long time. Well today, I officially began the design phase of my project, which is an interactive game-like experience with the purpose of teaching players basic concepts of cryptography and cryptoanalysis through hands-on learning.

However, it was very difficult for me to decide exactly how the player would learn cryptography. My first two ideas were amazingly different: one was to simply explain the player all the concepts and have them play a minigame or 2, and the other was to simply hand the player a cipher and tell them to crack it. Both of those, in my opinion, are terrible ideas. The first is terrible because the player has literally no reason to pay attention to the explanations, and might as well just play the minigames. The second idea was terrible because not everyone is Charles Babbage or Alan Turing, and therefore very few people will make it through the game, much less find enjoyment. I still haven’t decided the gameplay entirely, but most likely I’ll have a mix of the two, having the player solve simple puzzles inspired by Lawrence Dwight Smith’s Cryptography while explaining the history part of it, with a few minigames in between.

Anyway, the first thing I decided to do, in accordance with my plan, was to design a few screens that the player will see. I thought this was a good place to start, so without further ado:

These designs aren’t final, and they’re obviously just quick sketches of what should go where (to be clear, I am not using the green-shirt guy in the actual game) they are a good starting point.

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