Zodiac

Doog and Radek are at it again… this time their latest Demonticon is delivered safely trapped inside a cage, for our safety, presumably… and then the cage is neatly ensconced inside a handsome leather carrier.

From his backstory we suspect that Zodiac isn’t as malicious as his namesake, although his use of similar cryptograms that you’ll come across during the solve might suggest he’s not quite going to turn out to be the warm and cuddly type. The backstory invites us to negotiate four guards in order to release Zodiac from prison and then look deep into his soul to find out who he needs to see to get back on the right path.

Zodiac definitely looks the part of an evil mastermind with a devilish grin exposing a large gold false tooth... and a pair of mesmerising eyes inviting you in. The cage he’s trapped in turns out to be reasonably impenetrable – there’s some sort of locking mechanism in the base – but it won’t budge for love nor money… believe me, I tried both!

I ended up spending a heck of a long time trying to find a way into that little prison cell… I generated theories of what I wanted to do and then found myself totally unable to execute any of them, either because I couldn’t reach something I thought would be helpful, or because I didn’t have the right tool, or indeed because my theory turned out to be total rubbish!

After I’d been at it for a couple of days, Doog and Radek both reached out to me separately and asked me what I thought of Zodiac and I had to reply - somewhat embarrassed - that I had yet to even get Zodiac out of jail… I suspect the lads enjoyed hearing that.  :-)

Three days after I’d started, I investigated something I’d been largely ignoring up to that point and a whole new world opened up to me… all of a sudden I was actually able to do some physical puzzling and after a fair amount of scrabbling around I managed to finally free Zodiac on day three – insert own derogatory comment here – I deserve it!

With Zodiac out of the cell I really enjoyed the next few phases of puzzling – there’s a wonderful familiarity in a couple of the aspects of the solve and then there are several totally original little bits… there’s a great progression as you work through the solve and you can sense Doog peering over your shoulder and getting a kick out of every time you find yourself getting stopped in your tracks.

There’s a really brilliant part of the solution where something behaves in a somewhat bewildering fashion, until you completely solve that particular element and you can see what was going on –it’s all wonderfully elegant in its implementation, but thoroughly baffling until you realise what’s going on in there…

If you’re anything like me you’ll need to be reminded that your goal was to find who Zodiac needed to see to get him back on the right path – you might easily overlook that part of the challenge and in so doing rob yourself of a couple of extra layers on this veritable onion of a puzzle.

That last bit combines several elements rather neatly to add a fun additional challenge. Don’t forget about it!

Zodiac is definitely a great addition to the family – the prison added a significant extra degree of puzzling for me – and the extra challenge at the end ties everything together rather nicely. The meat of the Demonticon puzzle itself is great fun and discovering the bits and pieces and little easter eggs inside Zodiac’s head is a treat.

I loved it, even if I was well-embarrassed by how long it took me to release Zodiac from jail!

Bring on the next one, guys!!