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BuffaloBandit's Blogtastic Blog
The best nonsense on the Web and various other gimcracks and gewgaws.

2.09.2005

Puzzle Hacking 
There is a growing trend on the Web these days to try and take advantage of all that the medium has to offer and all of the subtleties that can be examined while "playing a game." The first experience I had with this was with Not Pr0n, that bills itself as, "The hardest riddle available on the internet." As far as I'm concerned, it probably is. It is ridiculously challenging and you need to employ every resource available to you, from google, to HTML source codes, to Photoshop, and anything else at your disposal. It's addictive and frustrating, but genuinely creative. I then ran into another game that was similar in structure, called Image Puzzle!, and aptly so. In this variation, you have to try and find the hidden code within the picture employing photoshop and wits. Neither of these first two did I manage to finish. Mainly because there are so many levels and I just haven't had the time, but they are also pretty damn hard. And, finally, today I stumbled across Riddle Challenge, which is only 5 levels long and not impossibly difficult. There are some tricks and difficulties to overcome, but all in all, a good, fun game. But now with all of these crazy puzzles coming out of the woodwork, I'm declaring this a genuine trend in online gaming... Puzzle Hacking I think is a good name for the genre. So without further ado, let me present to you my very first Puzzle Hacking award, which I achieved with no cheating, help, or outside involvement:

Are you gnarly enough to take the riddle challenge?
So, enjoy these games, I'll see if I can find more, and I'm sorry for my bad, bad, blogging behavior. I will try to be better in the future.