Cryptex Hunt (by Errol Elumir) - "2021 Cryptex Hunt"

Updated: Apr 29

Photo above is property of Cryptex Hunt

Company: Cryptex Hunt (by Errol Elumir)

Game: 2021 Cryptex Hunt

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Digital Escape Game 💻

Genre: Adventure

Date Played: March 31, 2021

Difficulty (based on 2 players): ~4-8/10 (Depending on game)

Size of Team: 1-10 Players (Ages 10+)

Time: Unlimited (Suggested 12 hrs)

Price: Free

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There is no overarching storyline across the entire hunt. However, each individual game had its own unique theme and varying degrees of story. There were some classic locales like an Egyptian temple and a wizard’s tower, as well as unusual themes like being stuck in a mall full of monsters. There were 10 different designers across the games, resulting in a playfully eclectic series of games.

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While there was a lot variation in theme and story, all of the games were built with Adventuron and had some similar 8-bit aesthetics. For anyone old enough to remember, there will be some serious 80’s nostalgia going on! That being said, some games featured more simplistic scenes than others, and they each had their own distinctive vibe.

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Cryptex Hunt 2021 was intended to be a “beginner” level, online puzzle hunt consisting of 12 main puzzles and a meta experience. For the masters in it to win the grand prize of an incredible, custom Cryptex from Justin Nevins, the puzzle hunt ran over 6 days at the start of March, with several puzzles released daily Monday to Friday and the final series on the Saturday. For the more casual puzzlers, anyone who finished by the end of March 2021 was in a random drawing for a standard Cryptex from Justin. Seriously, the standard ones are amazing, but the custom is just unbelievable. For anyone who missed it, the hunt is still up and available to play! (Even if the only prize is fun. And pride.)

Each game was typically played more than once, where you first played to beat the game, and then got to solve the actual hidden puzzle. While it was occasionally frustrating to have to continue to restart a game, there were built-in features to help reduce some of the redundancy, and it was fun to discover new aspects of repeated games. We also found that this dual nature made it quite family-friendly. Beating the 8-bit games themselves was something that the tween in our house really had fun with, and then we tended to do more of the heavy-lifting for the actual puzzle-solving portion. You ended up with a final word for each mini-game, which could then be entered on the main Cryptex Hunt 2021 puzzle site. There was an incredible Discord associated with it, where hints were available once the main contest was over for the grand prize.

Each individual game was a text-based adventure, where you could give commands to move around, look at stuff, use and interact with things, etc. Despite the variation in the 8-bit games, there was a lot of consistency in the types of commands used to navigate, which helped to streamline gameplay after getting used to the system in the first few games. There were occasional frustrations where we knew what to do but couldn’t find quite the right syntax to enter to make it happen. Overall, though, things went smoothly.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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While they are not all as insane as the MIT Mystery Hunt, which involves teams of up to 150 people competing for multiple days, puzzle hunts are known for being more challenging (and much longer) than your average escape room. As such, they can be a little intimidating. This one was specifically intended to be accessible to beginners! We found that the puzzles started off pretty easy but got progressively more challenging; though, there were a few towards the beginning that were perhaps a little harder than intended. We definitely leaned on the Discord community for hints a few times! There was definitely a search element across most of the games, and a lot of trying to see what might have changed when you re-play the game. The meta-puzzle was quite devious!

Photo above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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Participating in the Cryptex Hunt was such a fabulous experience. The whole set-up is so innovative, and the gameplay is varied and entertaining. While we still recommend playing it now, part of what we adored was the community-building nature of the event, particularly via the Discord channel, which included not only Errol and designers but scores of passionate and helpful players. Not to mention scores of equally stuck players, which always makes you feel better…We also really appreciated the collaborative nature from the creative side, bringing in so many talented designers with varied backgrounds. Now we are just impatiently waiting for March…This should be the 5th year of the annual Cryptex Hunt, though the style has been completely different each year.` We cannot wait to see what they’ve come up with this time around!