Cyber Agent

Learning goal

The subject is security, and the intent is that the student works out the difference between a weak and a strong password by hand instead of reading it. The opening brief sets the task as finding out which passwords are easy to crack, and which are more difficult, and thus more secure. Later beats add password reuse (one password for everything means if someone from Enigma misuses it, you lose everything) and biometric authentication together with its weak points. The closing exercise asks for a password of the student's own that satisfies the length, digit and special-character rules.

My role

• My part was the logic, the mechanics, the scene transitions and the balancing, as on all of these lessons; writing and visual art went to colleagues.
• Mapped the four character classes onto four hammers, which turns a rule about password composition into a loadout decision the player makes at every lock, and set the run of six locks to climb from a lowercase-and-uppercase example up to a fully mixed string.
• Built the circuit-board level: rotating connection tiles complete a powered trace, and only a solved board opens the biometric scanners that carry the exposition, so the explanation hangs on a puzzle state.
• Balanced the comparison round: six questions against three hearts, with pairs that force a judgement between length and character variety (seven characters using all four classes against eight characters using three).
• Wrote the free-text validator to report every unmet requirement separately (length, digits, special characters), so a rejected password tells the student what to fix.

Systems I designed

• Four contrasting activity types — action puzzle, spatial routing puzzle, multiple-choice quiz, free-text validation — carry a single topic, so it is taught through several interaction models instead of repeated drilling.
• A tool-selection mechanic maps abstract character classes onto four physical hammers, turning a composition rule into a loadout decision the player makes at every lock.
• Six password locks ramp from a lowercase-and-uppercase example up to a fully mixed-class string, so difficulty is carried by the content rather than by stacking new mechanics on top.
• The comparison round runs six questions against a three-heart life system and forces a trade-off judgement between length and character variety: a 7-character password using all four classes against an 8-character password using three.
• The free-text validator reports every unmet requirement separately — missing length, missing digits, missing special characters — so a failed attempt is diagnostic instead of a flat pass/fail.
• The biometric level ties exposition to a solved puzzle state: rotating connection tiles routes power across the board, and only that opens up the scanner devices that carry the dialogue.
• The framing fiction — Agent S, the Enigma organisation, the Keeper held up as a model of strong unique passwords — anchors each mechanic to a narrative beat, with the 'Cyber Agent' title as the terminal reward.
• Instruction is paced against play: short dialogue bubbles with a CONTINUE button and a repeat control sit between the interactive segments, never stacking explanation before the player has acted.

Core mechanics

• Third-person movement with world-space interaction prompts carrying a mouse-button glyph ("Hit with a hammer", "Rotate", "Use", "Break in the eye scanner").
• Hammer hotbar: four numbered tools bound to character classes — 1 small letters, 2 capital letters, 3 digits, 4 special characters — selected and swung at the password locks.
• A bench of six padlocks in a vault hall, each labelled with its password's composition; later locks also display the literal string (Password 3 "oBs6E4", Password 5 "tQ@6H4*Bc6_").
• Circuit-board routing puzzle: rotate "Energetic connection" tiles to complete a powered trace from the source to the scanning equipment, with connected segments lighting up white.
• Break-in interactions on the biometric devices scattered across the board, each one unlocking a piece of explanatory dialogue.
• Comparison round "Choose a stronger password:" — three cards per round across six rounds, each listing the password, its character count and the classes it contains, with hearts as lives.
• Free-text password composition with a CHECK button and per-rule failure feedback that lists exactly what is missing.
• A closing traversal segment through colour-shifting translucent maze volumes, key in hand, ending at a button that closes the lesson.

Tracked values

• Lives — three hearts in the quiz header
• Round progress — an X/6 counter in the quiz header
• Hammer hotbar slots 1–4, one per character class, with the active slot highlighted
• Character count, listed on every password card in the quiz
• Character classes present, listed per password card (small letters, capital letters, digits, special characters)

Example events

• Opening brief from Agent S: the player is a "newbie" starting spy training for the title of 'Cyber Agent', in "a series of lessons focusing on passwords".
• Password 5, labelled "(lower, upper, special characters and numbers)", displays the string "tQ@6H4*Bc6_" while hammer 4, special characters, sits equipped in the hotbar.
• Vault beat on reuse: one password for everything means "if someone from Enigma misuses it, you lose everything", with the Keeper set against it as someone whose passwords are strong and unique.
• Biometric exposition on the circuit board: authentication by unique features such as a fingerprint or face checked against a database, with optical fingerprint scanners called out as cheap and "not very reliable".
• Quiz round 4 of 6 with one heart left: Password 1 "!T7^z92" (7 characters, all four classes), Password 2 "R2^Z9&BX" (8 characters, digits, capitals and special characters) and Password 3 "8$W7pL" (6 characters, all four classes).
• Final exercise: "ENTER A PASSWORD THAT MEETS ALL SECURITY REQUIREMENTS" — the entry "Abc" comes back with three separate errors covering length, missing numbers and missing special characters.