ProjectInteractive Systems / April 2026
Enigmatica
- Question
- Can the cipher puzzles hidden in a manga become a game without rewriting the cipher logic for every chapter?
- Approach
- Reusable Python cipher mechanics separated from chapter scripts, exported to JSON and rendered as a static web game rebuilt automatically on every content change.
- Finding
- Manga cipher puzzles, rebuilt as a playable web game on top of reusable Python cipher code.
- Built with
- Python · static web export · GitHub Pages
- Chapter 1
- Live and playable in the browser
- 3 puzzles
- Index extraction, grid extraction and a guided Hill-cipher step
What I did
I separated the reusable mechanics, the ciphers and extraction methods, from the chapter-specific puzzle scripts. Each chapter owns its own puzzle sequence, notes and assets, and builds on the same core modules.
Python exports each chapter’s data to JSON, and a static site renders it as a landing page and a one-puzzle-at-a-time play page with hints and progress tracking. GitHub Pages rebuilds the public site whenever chapter content changes.
What I found
- One source of truth works. The same chapter data drives command-line demos, local documentation and the public web game.
- Splitting the landing page from the play page makes it read like a finished product rather than a prototype.
- Adding a chapter is now content work, not engineering work: new chapters go through the same export and deploy path.