We were able to interview the developers of CIPHER ZERO. They took our six best questions and gave us really in-depth answers. We made sure to organize them so you’d know who was speaking, but this is a really great insight into development and how a game comes together.
GameDevourer: CIPHER ZERO started as a Ludum Dare game jam entry. Can you explain how that original theme shaped the main idea of a puzzle game where nothing is explained, but everything makes sense… eventually? Also, what key reasons made you decide to turn this prototype into a full commercial release with Zapdot?
Ben Wu, Designer: The theme of the original Ludum Dare game jam was “Start With Nothing,” so we thought it would be an interesting idea to create a puzzle game that begins not only with the absolute simplest mechanics possible (toggling a single tile on and off) but also with the absolute minimum explicit tutorialization possible. This then naturally led to a framework similar to those in puzzle games like The Witness, where the player is able to learn mechanics and their interactions on their own via trial and error.
GameDevourer: A big part of CIPHER ZERO is its rule-discovery gameplay, where players learn mechanics through trial and error and intuition instead of direct instructions or tutorials. With more than 300 hand-made puzzles, what steps did you take to design these puzzles to help players understand the ‘language’ of glyphs and rules? How were you able to make sure players could feel a strong sense of discovery without getting too frustrated?
Ben Wu, Designer: The primary question we are asking ourselves when designing a puzzle is “what are trying to teach the player with this puzzle?”
To most effectively teach a player a new glyph or rule via puzzles, we found that puzzles are best grouped into four sets:
- The first set of puzzles would communicate foundational elements
- The second set would test that foundational knowledge
- The third set would start combining the new idea with existing ideas that the player has already encountered
- The fourth set would then start testing that holistic knowledge and challenging assumptions that the player may have made up to that point.
This kind of structure is best when teaching anyone anything, really, but it was core to CIPHER ZERO since the game is constantly introducing new ideas. We did a lot of playtesting to make sure that each puzzle, once solved, effectively communicated the specific idea we wanted the player to understand, and tweaked puzzles many times to adjust to how players responded. Keeping things interesting then was about making sure that every puzzle was either teaching the player something new or challenging them on their existing knowledge in a new way. Practically speaking, this meant that there was really aggressive cutting of puzzles down to what we thought was the bare minimum number of puzzles needed to communicate the full set of ideas and mechanics to the majority of players.
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GameDevourer: CIPHER ZERO has a simple, clean look and a lack of unnecessary menus and clutter. What are your thoughts on how the minimalist design, evolving environments, and the overall theme of a game should work together?
Annie E, Artist: Speaking simply, people like to look at minimalist things when they think, and beautiful things when they relax. To encourage the players to give the next puzzle one more try, we incorporated both and made transitioning between them fun.
CIPHER ZERO has always been a gameplay-first experience where the minimalist nature is imperative to gameplay. Minimalism forces a player to interpret, infer, and imagine. It’s a very targeted, focused set of skills, and it can get tiring over a long period of time. The player will want something new and fresh to stare at when stuck.
There are two types of outcomes for people who get stuck. The players who need a long break will close the game and/or step away. The players who just want a short break — without quitting the game — are the ones preparing to solve another set of puzzles. And conversely, if we wanted players to stay in the game and solve one more set of puzzles, we should make it easy for them to sit in the game and contemplate their next move. The environments of CIPHER ZERO are designed to match that level of energy, to have slowly swaying animations and muted colors, subtle clues of prior tribulations, and visual interest to cleanse the palate of puzzles past. It’s made to feel nostalgic and familiar, to celebrate what a player’s already achieved but also encourage them to achieve even more.
The UI also plays a strong supporting role in the gameplay experience. It serves two functions. One is to get players to, from, and through the gameplay without taking too long or breaking the “vibe.” The other function is to serve as a fidget toy for players who need to balance mental stimulation while contemplating their next move. This makes it comfortable for players to sit in the game, sometimes to do nothing but stare and move their mouse a little, and push a little more to give that puzzle one more try.
So when it comes down to it, the cohesion between the minimalist design, evolving environments, and the theme of the game is to acknowledge, encourage, and support the efforts of our players as they decipher the unexplained. We hope that the environments feel like places you’ve been and things you’ve overcome. We hope it makes you feel seen and your efforts noticed. And if you overcome all the puzzles and all the challenges, we hope that it’ll give you the confidence to shoot for the moon in your next life endeavor, whatever it may be.
GameDevourer: A key design choice in CIPHER ZERO is its strictly linear progression, where players must solve each puzzle in order without hints or the option to skip. So if a player gets completely stuck, they have no way forward. What was the main reason for this linear approach and leaving out a hint system? Did you almost give players the option to skip levels?
Ben Wu, Designer: To be honest, if I were to do it again, I’d not make the whole game completely linear. It does make sense for puzzle sets to be linear as we usually want players to understand a specific set of ideas in a specific order, but I think it would have benefited the game for players to have more flexibility to choose which order they wanted to tackle each glyph and to have the ability to go try different puzzles if they felt stumped on a particular puzzle.
GameDevourer: The game’s relaxing music is probably one of the best parts about it, especially how it changes based on player actions and progress. It’s almost like a calm, meditative mood. Can you explain how you created this dynamic sound system, both creatively and technically?
Will Seegers, Musician: Matching the energy of the game through music is crucial to getting a soundtrack to feel good. My goal was to bring the power of a live orchestra playing to film, or a DJ hyping up a club crowd, to CIPHER ZERO. You’re not exactly jumping up and down, banging your head when you finish a puzzle set, but internally, the feelings can be close to that! Taking what I knew about music and sound engineering, I worked with our team to make sure these sorts of moments could be reached as organically as possible. Sometimes the music in CIPHER ZERO will help you focus, sometimes it will give you an adrenaline rush to push ahead, and sometimes it will be there to help wind you down and give it another try tomorrow!
Ian Clinkenbeard, Engineer: On the technical side of things, the music in the game is comprised of hundreds of short loops split across multiple instruments that get dynamically sequenced, added, and removed based on the current state of the game. We were also able to dynamically change the volume and effects on each of the instruments, so the mixing of the song will also change in the same way that the song itself does. We had a very freeform approach to assembling these songs together, so each one changes and reacts to the player’s actions in different ways. Some songs, like the one for Suburbs, are more linearly structured, while others, like the one for Powerplant, are more repetitive, and the progression is accomplished more by adding and subtracting layers. We mostly just experimented around and tried to fit the needs of the song until we hit upon an approach that we enjoyed enough to run with.
GameDevourer: Ben Wu has talked about wanting to make game development a full-time job, and CIPHER ZERO has already done very well, ranking 49th out of 1600 entries in its Ludum Dare reviews. With the game now on Steam and a possible mobile version in the works, how does this success and working with Zapdot fit into your long-term plans for the game and your careers as developers?
Ben Wu, Designer: I have actually been able to work as a full-time game developer since mid-2020, so 5 years now! Although the project was originally a portfolio piece, once I partnered with Zapdot, the goal was to see the project through to launch, regardless of how and when I would be able to break into the industry full-time. Additionally, because most of my full-time work has been on the engineering side and on larger teams, I benefited a lot from continuing to work on CIPHER ZERO on a small team, flexing my game design muscles.
