Two weeks ago, the creator behind the channel Nigels Life appeared on our radar after designing a fully-functioning version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? within YouTube. As the first-ever project for that channel, it was impressive, but we also wondered what Nigel would do next.
Now, we have our answer. Nigel has launched another YouTube-based game, and it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before. This time, inspired by the Cicada 3301 project, he has created a series of puzzles that unlock hidden video URLs when solved.
The puzzles are presented inside a web series titled Encrypted, which can be found on the Nigels Life channel. Each video in the series contains clues that help the viewer decipher the video ID of the next episode. As creator Tom Scott explained back in 2016, there are 64^11 unique YouTube URLs available, so there’s no way to brute force your way through Encrypted. To get through the series, you’ll need to tackle the increasingly-difficult challenges Nigel presents.
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There are 11 videos to get through in all. If you get stuck, you can find the answers to individual puzzles by heading over to a new subreddit dedicated to Encrypted.
The difficulty level of the puzzles, from the ones I’ve seen, seems to be somewhat uneven, but the sheer originality of Encrypted is deserving of merit. At the very least, given all the effort Nigel must have put into this game, he deserves a lot more than the 8,800 subscribers he currently has at the time of this post.
