Frequency: Chernobyl Dev Diaries — Decrypting secret messages

Hey, friends! Welcome to Drunkard Racoons Radio and today we continue discussing our very first project Frequency: Chernobyl.

For those who just landed on this page ⬇

Frequency: Chernobyl is an immersive first-person single-player adventure based around the secrets of number stations. The plot is driven by various puzzles and encrypted messages originating from a mysterious radio station nicknamed "Radio Chaos."

You are not alone in your quest through the Exclusion Zone — the game includes allies who will provide hints to help the protagonist move forward along the storyline. We have also dedicated a large portion of the in-game journal to various decoding techniques. Nonetheless, players should be prepared to strain their ears and beat their brains out over the more sophisticated audio puzzles on offer.

The interface of the in-game journal is currently a WIP, but we would like to give you a sneak peek of its earlier prototype as well as the kind of puzzles you can expect to come up against upon release.

There are hundreds of known encryption methods around the globe. The roots of modern data encryption can be traced almost 3,000 years back to the Mesopotamian era.

Drastically different forms of cryptology developed early on in separate regions of the populated world — from the famous Caesar Shift Cipher born in the ancient Roman Empire, to the early Indian kingdoms, where state officials used secret codes to communicate with a countrywide network of spies.

We used almost two dozen distinct encrypting techniques when inventing puzzles for the game and our main goal right now is to balance their difficulty. Early in-house testing has shown that while some players cracked the ciphers rather easily, others almost went up in smoke trying to figure those out and wanted to smash their keyboards (on our heads 😅, no doubt).

Today we would like to share one of the easiest in-game puzzles based on an alphanumerically encrypted shellcode and are looking forward to hearing what you have to say about it. Don't worry, we'll also provide a key to successfully decoding it! Check this out:

CIPHER

715903om62505

KEY

Let us know how long it took you to decode the cipher and please don’t spoil the solution in the Discussions. We would like everybody to have a chance to figure this one out for themselves!

Hope you liked this article and that it inspired you to wishlist Frequency: Chernobyl. If you’re eager to know even more — a free prologue is coming soon. Stay tuned!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1415600/Frequency_Chernobyl/