Bitcoin is the ultimate riddle in many ways. Miners have spent endless hours trying to puzzle out the nonce necessary to solve each block and claim the 12.5 BTC reward attached. In contrast, armchair sleuths have spent similar hours trying to guess the identity of its pseudonymous author. A new generation of puzzle games with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as the prize seems natural.
The Bitcoin Mysteries Deepen
Montecrypto: The Bitcoin Enigma is a new game that follows in the footsteps of Satoshi Nakamoto’s The Legend of Satoshi. The last game, devised in 2015 but only recently received further attention when the fiendishly complex artwork-based game was ultimately solved, received new attention two weeks ago. It rewarded its solver with $50,000 in bitcoin, cash, and other split coins. The Bitcoin Enigma, a new set of 24 riddles, with a prize of ‘only’ 1 BTC, but that’s more than enough to entice a new generation of investigators to try to solve its mysteries.
The Popularity of Bitcoin Puzzle Games Is Growing
The game, released on February 20, was developed by Gem Rose Collective and will allow users to “leave hints along the road or delay others along by guiding them to dead ends.” Montecrypto: The Bitcoin Enigma feels like an RPG, with sad images of magnificent, aged buildings and a befuddling network of stairways and passageways. The most intriguing feature of the game is its idea, not its graphics. Players must choose whether to work together to solve the 24 puzzles or go alone, attempting to frustrate opponents by leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that leads them away.
The Popularity of Bitcoin Puzzle Games Is Growing
In terms of game theory, Montecrypto is similar to Neon District, which was produced by the same artist that designed the puzzle art for The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto. “Shared inspiration comes from the cypherpunk ethos…playful applications of cryptography, a love of creating and solving puzzles using steganography, the hacker mentality…cyberpunk and steampunk genres, classic card and role-playing games, and our childhood pastimes of night-owl gaming and coding,” says the company’s chief developer.
While Neon District is an ethereum-based game that can be played through the Metamask browser wallet, Montecrypto is more akin to a lottery game because it costs $1.99. Rather than being determined by chance, success is determined by talent, which includes degrees of cunning, strategy, and puzzle-solving. Players who think they have what it takes to solve the challenge should look over the project’s FAQ page and go to Github, where one of the initial hints is hidden.
The game’s creators, like Satoshi Nakamoto, have chosen to remain anonymous for the time being but say: “As huge fans of treasure hunts, we took inspiration from riddles like la charette d’Or (the golden owl), in which a statue of the owl was buried in 1993 at the same time a series of clues were published, and still nobody has solved the clues to find the owl and claim the 15kg (33lb)
The Popularity of Bitcoin Puzzle Games Is Growing
It all sounds fascinating. The only drawback is that competitors must pay the $1.99 entry fee to determine whether the reward is genuine. Aspiring detectives may decide that’s a risk worth taking.