Palm Cracker
Experience it first on itch!
Coming soon to iOS and Android!
You have secured a PalmPilot from the infamous Crypt Killer, and you know his true identity is hidden somewhere on the unit. Solve the riddles, crack the codes and learn how to decrypt true ciphers in this unique detective game!
From the creator of other OS simulation titles, such as 128k, DISOWN95, After Hours and Atom☭grad.
What is the PalmPilot?
I loved using the PalmPilot growing up. It was designed to be a portable, handheld device for managing personal information, but I mostly used it to play games and being impressed by the handwriting recognition. It was seriously impressive for being the late 90's!
Download
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Development log
- Palm Cracker update! New final puzzle and stabilityApr 11, 2024
- Palm Cracker - Now playable in browser!Feb 27, 2024
Comments
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Finished and had a lot of fun deciphering it all. Had one suggestion, and it would be to add unrelated expenses into the Expense list, to hide what you actually need to do better, like putting in "Clothing, $30" among other things.
Hey, that’s a pretty good idea! I’m in the middle of a big update right now, I think I’ll add something there to make it a bit less obvious. Thanks for the tip!!
Enjoyed the game a lot! but I had to skip unlocking the last book because the sum crashed my game every time i tried it!
Huh, sorry to hear that! Never heard of that one before. I’ll try to replicate it and send out a bug fix.
hey sorry for the late comment. Do you remember of you played in browser or if you downloaded the game?
It happened first in-browser, then I downloaded it to see if it worked that way, which was not the case. I believe there was an error message window when I downloaded, I can try again and send the message (assuming i'm remembering correctly) if you'd like!
That would really be awesome! I haven't been able to replicate the issue on my end, so it hasn't been easy to solve.
I just gave it a shot and had no issues this time... I wonder what's changed? Not sure how much more I can investigate, but I'll let you know if I figure it out. If not, apologies for wasting your time on it!
Thanks for trying!!! That's the thing with computers, they are magic and sometimes weird stuff happens. Glad it's working now!
really great puzzle game, tricky but not at all contrived. I did have to look up a longer explanation on how playfair ciphers work, but other than that didn't need any hints.
yay pda simulator (i guess)
1-6 were pretty easy but the 7th one took me an hour to solve with the tutorial up
the 7th one is definetly a really big jump that makes the difficulty ramping feel weird
also please fix the crash with applications button, as soon as i unlocked the final application the applications button stopped working and i had to close the game to access it
finding the final grid was also kinda unintuative with no hints as far as i could see which isnt the best
love the game and it was really fun interesting and creative puzzles that made me think
Yeah, you're correct. It's pretty uneven. I wanted to end on something big, but took it a bit too far. I got to admit though, I think it's so cool that you spent over an hour playing my weird ass game.
The bug with the application button is only in the windows version, and I've got it on my to-do list. I missed it, since I have mostly been struggling with getting the html5 version to work.
I do however have some issues updating the game. For some reason, the neko mini game breaks when I fix the bug lol. It's weird. I'll try to to get it fixed next week.
And I agree about the final grid. I hated myself when I put it in there, but you are actually the first one to mention it.
Thanks for playing it and taking the time to comment!
so idk if this is actually hard or if im just too dumb, either way, is really really good, i spent some hours in it and its a really enjoyble experience!!!!
yeah, it’s hard, you gotta be a real smartass to beat it! I could never.
Great game, one issue though.
When I want to go back to apps menu (Applications button) the game crashes. It only crashes if I click on the button while I have an app opened such as "Addres", "Mail", "Library", etc. However, it does not crash if I click on Applications button while im in the apps menu.
This problem appeared only closer to the end end of game.
It wasn't that annoying and I still had a great evening but I think it's better so that you can complete the game without ever closing it.
Oh, that’s interesting! Never seen that before. Thanks for letting me know about it, I’ll make sure to fix it in the next update.
I think there's a few problems:
1. the Neko game is only spawning birds - I tried to play it here and NG and both did the same thing.
2. the Pigpen cypher where ICU is reversed, I think you have a "V" where I think you should have a "^".
That last one was a doozie. I needed the walkthrough to get on the right track. I was pretty close, though.
NGL I thought for a sec your name was an anagram at the end lol
hey, the last update broke the game and I’ve uploaded an old version for now. It fixed the issue with Neko, even though I have no idea how it broke in the first place lol. I’ll have to take a look at the pigpen cipher, that’s news to me.
Thanks for playing and letting me know about the issues! And sorry about my weird name 🤡
haha don't apologize for your name, it's fine. It just happened to look like something that could have been an anagram too.
The game was a lot of fun to get through, even with the one broken puzzle! I enjoyed the sleuthing. I hope to check out your other games soon too - you replied to me over on DISOWN95, but I haven't had a chance to check that comment yet haha
There seems to be a problem where I can't spawn anything but a bird? Even if I select the other options, it still spawns a bird.
Saaame. I wasn't sure if this was a bug, of if I was missing something lol.
Tried on newgrounds, confirmed it was a brand new game (no saved content pulling through) and again, it would only spawn birds regardless of which option I picked.
oh crap, thanks for letting me know. Something must have happened in the last update. I’ll jump right on it
If you could, do reply to my comment with the update!
It’s live!
A ton of fun, although there were some issues with layers 4 and 7. Layer 4's suggestion to split into equal sized pieces... doesn't make sense, given that the rails are intrinsically different sizes, and even the examples disprove it!
I don't know why trying to solve layer 7 didn't work, but even with the actual grid (I first tried straining my eyes to use the one in the book) and the keyword, neither myself nor dcode were able to produce the correct answer!
I was able to solve it by railing up the letters again and again until they unscrambled themselves.
This was really fun! Great puzzles and I love the palmpilot-style interface.
This game is very good!!! (even though I can't find any password it's fun to try :P )
In fact I got level 1, I'm very happy :D
I’m happy that you’re happy! I’ve created a walkthrough that you can use if you got stuck somewhere: https://pettermalmehed.se/palmcracker_walkthrough
thanks for playing!
THANK YOU!!!