Poems & Codes review – A puzzle game just as sweet

It feels like it released in the early days of the pandemic, but it was only February last year that indie developers Hero Game Co debuted their literary cipher game Prose & Codes (our review) on PC.

For Wordle fans and English literature enthusiasts, Prose & Codes is a simple but satisfying – and oddly compelling – experience. Players are presented with over 400 encrypted excerpts from literary classics to decode using letter substitution. Solve the puzzle, reveal the name of the book and its author, and then even follow a link to download the full public domain text via the Project Gutenberg website. For the record, 10% of every Prose & Codes sale goes to the volunteer-driven global ebook repository.

A year and a half later, Hero Game Co have released a follow-up to Prose & Codes: Poems & Codes. Following almost the exact same formula as its predecessor, right down to the Gutenberg donations, this time players are deciphering classic poetry from across a variety of themes, including Love, Death, Nature, Inspirational and War. The included poems range from the very familiar – think Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken – to the lesser known. Personally, I’d never encountered Lewis Carroll’s tongue-in-cheek tirade A Sea Dirge before.

And that’s what is most enjoyable about the game. If you’re someone who easily loses themselves down a wiki rabbit hole, Poems & Codes consistently delivers a satisfying knowledge hit. As you play, you’re constantly learning, constantly expanding your mind. Poems & Codes is rich in cerebral reward, as you not only crack the ciphers, and uncover the names of each poem and poet, but then gain access to a concise biography of every writer. The latter is a new and welcome inclusion, as Prose & Codes simply paired its extracts with a plot synopsis of the book they came from.

At the same time, Poems & Codes feels more challenging than its forerunner, but that’s probably due to the nature of poetic writing, which is often more dated in its language use, and unpredictable in structure. In fact, unlike Prose & Codes, the sequel doesn’t cap its hints at three per cipher. You can get as much help as you need.

On that note, casual puzzle game Poems & Codes seems intent on welcoming in as many players as possible. Though there’s no audio description, you have a number of options to customise the experience visually, from choosing font size and style, to switching between light and dark mode. You can also play simultaneously with mouse, selecting the alphabet table at the bottom of the screen, or keyboard, simply typing in your chosen letters and navigating via arrow keys (my preference). Combined with a truly relaxing score that calls to mind cool, quiet evenings after a rain shower, and you’re all set for a soothing session of puzzle solving.

Poems & Codes is best enjoyed in shorter sessions, for the record. It’s easy to fatigue as there is no real evolution in gameplay. That said, if you’ve picked the Progressive difficulty setting – another customisation option available to you – the ciphers will become increasingly difficult, going from Easy (six letters filled in at the start) to Hard (zero letters revealed).

Whether your tastes lean to Prose & Codes, or Poems & Codes (why not both?), it’s advisable to treat these PC games much like solving the daily Wordle, or completing the newspaper crossword as part of your daily routine. Be in the moment, savour the deliciousness of each puzzle, and relish the substantial mental returns.

Released on 17 October, Poems & Codes is available now for PC (including Mac and Linux) through Steam, itch.io, and Green Man Gaming. You can also download a demo to try it out.