The Password Game is probably the most absurd videogame I’ve ever seen, and everyone should be playing the free game right now. You’re given the simple task of generating a secure password via in-game prompts, and what begins like any other password creation very quickly becomes about perfect chess moves, raising a chicken, and playing GeoGuessr.
Neal Agarwal’s free The Password Game starts out exactly as you’d expect: you need to include, letters, numbers, and special characters in a password. Then you need your individual numbers to add to a certain number, write out a month of the year, and even the name of a company logo. All of a sudden you’re adding a random CAPTCHA into a password, and it only gets more absurd from there.
Today’s Wordle, the current phase of the moon as an emoji (no, I’m not joking), and finding the name of a country in a built-in game of GeoGuessr are just a few of your challenges.
If it wasn’t already apparent, The Password Game is pure brilliance. Not only does it get more absurd, but it turns you into a sort of internet detective, having to use search engines like Google to answer questions and create an increasingly absurd password. Agarwal also made the videogame version of the trolly problem that keeps getting harder and has plenty more to experience, so you’ve likely seen their work before.
I’d end up looking for signs or words in the GeoGuessr game and translating them to guess the country, only to then be met with needing to write the best move in an “algebraic chess notation,” and I didn’t expect I’d be learning about the history of chess moves today.
After sharing the game, Agarwal says “there are rules in this game that ensure I will never see the pearly gates” and I’ll be honest, I couldn’t agree more. Some of these are frankly impossible – and I love it.
If you want to cheat at any point and look it up online I’ve also got bad news for you, things like the CAPTCHA, chess move, and GeoGuessr game are all randomized, so you’d better get to learning fast. Rule 16 is when algebraic chess gets introduced, and it also looks like where most people tap out of The Password Game. Not only do you need to be good at chess, but you also need to know how the algebraic inputs function to tell the game what piece you’d like to move where.
Don’t worry though, it gets easier. You just need to input a YouTube video URL for footage of a specific length, and have periodic table elements in your password that add up to a specific value, but at least we’ve got the sense to skip Rule 34, right?
You’ve got to look after a chicken named Paul, and I lost him immediately after sorting through the chess answer, meaning I’d need to do it again. I’ve never been more devastated in my life to see the Dark Souls death screen.
You can play The Password Game here, and it might just be one of the most inventive experiences of the year.
If you want even more free goodness, we’ve got a list of the best free Steam games you can play right now, alongside the best single-player games too. You wouldn’t want to have to play The Password Game with a group, that’s for sure.
