We interrupt your Wordle playing to bring you a brand-new word puzzle game – this time with a literary leaning. Introducing Prose & Codes, out today from the husband, wife and corgi team of Hero Game Co.

Releasing at what couldn’t be a better time for the title, Prose & Codes is a stylish and relaxing literary cipher game for PC, presenting players with 350 coded excerpts from classic novels. The novels in question span seven genres, including Adventure, Science Fiction, Horror and Children’s Fiction, and they range from iconic to lesser known texts.

Prose & Codes features a simple letter substitution cipher (where all the Ts in the coded text are Cs in reality, for example). Players use their PC keyboard to substitute and erase letters, which typically auto populate the rest of the excerpt. Alternatively, you can click on the alphabet row that appears at the bottom of every cipher screen.

Once a cipher is decoded, players can guess the source of the excerpt – itself a kind of mini game. What’s more interesting at this point, though, is that you have the opportunity to favourite the quote, read a spoiler-free synopsis of the book it’s from, and even access the full novel. Clicking on Entire Story will open your web browser and take you to the book’s entry on Project Gutenberg, an online library of over 60,000 free ebooks. There, you can read the story online, or download it in several formats.

This isn’t sneaky exploitation of a free resource, however. A portion of every sale of Prose & Codes will be going to support the volunteer-driven archival and distribution project.

Now it’s important to point out that Prose & Codes isn’t really a game for hardcore puzzle game fans. It’s never insultingly easy, and you can switch between four difficultly levels at any time to increase the challenge. That said, the gameplay is one-note. Even in Progressive mode, which dynamically ramps up the difficulty from Easy to Hard as you tick off ciphers, Prose & Codes feels samey.

As a text centred game, it’s not very visually dynamic either. That’s if you need stimulation in the form of continual movement and animation to keep you engaged. Veteran players of (electronic) puzzle games through to the most casual of gamers are likely to fatigue unless they’re completionists.

There’s a big “but” paired with this criticism, however.  

While you likely won’t play Prose & Codes in unbroken multi-hour stretches, there’s a good chance you’ll dip into it continually for weeks, maybe months. Prose & Codes could become as much a part of your daily routine as tackling the day’s Wordle, or skimming the news headlines over your first morning coffee.

The deciphering in Prose & Codes is fun enough, but the game’s greatest pleasure lies in the discovery, or rediscovery, of beloved texts. Book lovers – especially people familiar with literary classics – will get a kick out of it. And Prose & Codes plays up the nostalgia, incorporating library index cards and vintage etched illustrations into its visual design, which is, in turn, paired with a retro relaxing piano score.

Prose & Codes may actually be targeting an older audience, which is reflected in its dark mode option “to rest your eyes” and ability to increase the text size of its puzzles.

Then again, the game also has obvious benefits in terms of promoting the love of reading to younger generations. Educators and parents could easily use Prose & Codes to introduce adolescents and teens to classic literature, hooking them with the often intriguing and timelessly relevant excerpts.

Personally, as a university English major, I thought I was well read, or at least informed about the classics. Prose & Codes exposed me to several I’d never encountered before, stoking my curiosity. I now have a number of novels to at least investigate, if not read in full.

Prose & Codes may not be the most exciting game, but it generates a lot of goodwill. And its heart is clearly in the right place as it attempts to spread the love of reading, and appreciation of seminal texts of the past.

If you’re still not entirely sold on the idea of Prose & Codes, you can get hands on with the game via a downloadable demo. Try before you buy, and all that.

Prose & Codes is out now, from February 11, for PC, Mac and Linux via Steam and itch.io. The title seems like an excellent fit for mobile as well, so it’ll be interesting to see if Hero Game Co explore that avenue in future.


Prose & Codes review

It’s neither the most challenging nor exciting puzzle game, but Prose & Codes offers loads of pleasure for lovers of books, and words in general. Stirring up feelings of nostalgia and curiosity, every deciphering session is laid back and lovely, surprising with its sense of cerebral fulfillment.

 8
Prose & Codes was reviewed on PC