The Cypher Files: The interactive puzzle book and escape room - the perfect gift for curious minds!

This is the third book I have enjoyed from the author Dimitris Chassapakis, the first 2 being the 2 Journal 29 books. I will compare a little bit between this book and those but also hopefully give enough information about just this book to help potential buyers make up their minds! This book is not a regular novel or straightforward story, each page has some sort of riddle or puzzle to solve to progress to the next page. You will need a phone to input your answers and then get a bit more of the story and a special code word. These code words are then used in later puzzles to help come to their solutions so it is essential to have the internet available while using this book. I used my phone but it would also be possible to use a computer. Using the phone added an element of immersion though as the input and response feels like text messaging. In the story itself you are cast as a secret agent trying to solve a mystery. I won't give away too much of the plot as that is part of the fun to unravel what is happening as it goes along. I found the story line much easier to get into than Journal 29 was and it felt a lot more cohesive. Some of the puzzles seemed kind of shoe-horned in to fit the theme but they were all fun to solve and worked well enough. In comparison to Journal 29, I initially felt a little disappointed as the book felt a lot thinner and therefore not as many puzzles to solve, it turns out though that a lot of the content of the story is within the messages you send and receive from your "spy team". I found this was really well implemented, I really felt like it was an unfolding adventure and was excited to keep going. In journal 29 I occasionally skipped pages if I got stuck and came back to them later as there didn't seem to be any real story (though this was remedied a bit in the sequel) but in the Cypher files I never felt like skipping ahead as I wanted to solve the story in order. I also never really got stuck though either - perhaps because of having had the practice of the previous books but most of the puzzles felt pretty straightforward to solve. They were all fun though. The main time I had a problem was a few of the puzzles have a website to go to and my phone didn't have motion controls allowed on the internet browser so I couldn't "look" up and down in the room. It was obvious I did need to look that way though and I guessed perhaps my phone wasn't working properly so I figured it out in the end by changing my phone settings without having to resort to the hints! Speaking of hints - each puzzle has a hint in the back and also there is a website with more hints. There was one puzzle that I wasn't progressing with and I checked the hint and instantly had enough to go on to solve the rest myself so they seem pretty well written and just the right amount of helpful. i've just had a look at the website hints and they are a lot more of a solution or more in-depth hint so would be helpful if you get really stumped by any of the puzzles! Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It didn't take me anywhere near as long to solve as Journal 29 but it felt like much more of an exciting story and I think overall I liked it a bit more despite there not being as many puzzles. I would really recommend this book for other fans of Journal 29 but also for fans of escape rooms, EXIT! games or any similar puzzle books.

Nice!

Whilst presented well the puzzles are very easy. The only puzzle that really had me feeling excited was puzzle 15 since it required some actual research. Completed in approximately an hour.

I bought this for my other half for Christmas, in part because I read some reviews that said it was quick to finish (3 hours solo, I think was the quote) and she's extremely busy so giving her something that would take hundreds of hours would be more of a curse than a present. She's definitely enjoying the book, and I have to say the puzzles are varied, interesting and as described - like the sorts of things you get in an escape room. But it is not anywhere near as quick as the previous reviewer had claimed. It's now almost a month since Christmas, and I can definitely say that she's spent much more than three hours, and has a fair way still to go. We've completed dozens of escape rooms together, played a bunch of "EXIT" escape-room-in-a-box games, we've never timed out and have rarely needed (or wanted) additional clues to solve stuff. So, if you're buying this thinking it's an easy afternoon to complete, you may be surprised. Like all puzzles, when you see the solution it looks easy, but it's by no means guaranteed you will see it instantly.

I have just worked through this book with my family (age 13 & 15). We really enjoyed it! A good variety of different puzzles, the online elements like the virtual reality rooms were well done and the puzzles were challenging but do-able (2 levels of hints are available, so we never got completely stuck). Just enough plot to hold the thread of the puzzles together and keep us interested. We completed it over 3 sessions of 1-2 hours each. Highly recommended and we’re now off to try the harder one!!

It took less than 3 hours to complete, solo and without hints, and I took the time to read all of the story elements both in the book and on the accompanying website, none of which are necessary to solve the puzzles. A bit easy overall, I think, since if you've much experience at all with escape rooms or this sort of puzzle then you'll have seen the majority of the puzzles before in one way or another, including in the author's own books. That said, there are a couple of genuinely creative puzzles too, which I won't spoil here but led to some good 'aha' moments. There are 28 puzzles in the book which makes it pretty good value for an escape room, although somewhat disappointing for a puzzle book. But, that said, if you haven't tried this sort of thing before then this is a good place to begin. So 4* if you're new to this (but not 5* due to overly precise answer strings in places), or the 3* I've given it if you already know what you're getting. The book must be used alongside an internet-connected device, and really it expects you to use a smartphone.

Makes you think and collaborate together

I've enjoyed working through this book, but found myself needed to seek help on forums more than I would have liked. Maybe I get stuck on one way of thinking about a puzzle and other's will find the answers more satisfying. My only real gripe is that the print quality is a bit poor, and as you spend a long time staring at and scrutinising images, it would be nicer to have a better resolution.

This does have catches that make you facepalm because they are almost /too/ simple, but overall, this is a neat connection of the online portion and the book! I recommend it!

Not impossible but not easy, either. This was my first time trying a book in this genre. I ran out of patience with it, will stick to logic puzzles! I thought the storyline was pretty average, had to refer to a blog for help several times. Good that hints in the book are basic, you can check on the website for more hints if needed. Overall I think I’m not well suited to this type of puzzle, logic (rather than cryptic) is where I do better. Unfortunately I didn’t end up finishing it as I ran out of patience - I thought it would be fun to scan QR codes, do some googling- but turns out I am happier when all the needed clues are within the book page.

I have played many escape room games and done a few actual escape rooms, but this was the first escape book I’ve tried. I know that this is the third book by this author, but I chose to try this one first since the reviews said it was easier than the first two books. It was pretty easy. There were only a handful of puzzles that I didn’t know how to solve immediately. There were always plenty of clues and I was able to finish the book in 3 days without using any hints. In fact, some of the puzzles had almost too many clues as in they were unnecessarily leading. Even still, I very much enjoyed this book. The book held the puzzles, but there is also an accompanying website to make some puzzles more interactive. That and the fact that there was an actual theme and consistent storyline made this a complete, well rounded and satisfying experience. The overall production value was fantastic. I think that experienced problem solvers will likely find the puzzles to be too easy, but this is an excellent book for novices. There’s a wide variety of problem types and a hints section in case one gets stuck. The one thing I didn’t realize when buying the book though is that some of the puzzles require outside resources (googling) to find information. Not a problem really, I just don’t remember seeing that explicitly stated, so I figured I’d do that here. Overall, I’m happy with the purchase and have since bought Journal 29 (the first in the series) to get more challenging problems. I managed to finish the book without damaging any pages so I’ll likely pass it on as a gift :)

Sono contenta per l'acquisto

Great adventure in a book. Lots of nice puzzles as well as analog in the book as digital. Some easy, some really dificult and challenging.