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VaultForge
Crack the code, capture the flag — a white-hat cryptography / cybersecurity puzzle game for ages 15–18. Solve scaffolded crypto and forensics-lite challenges (substitution, frequency analysis, modular arithmetic, public-key intuition, hashing) to capture flags, and build defensive cyber awareness. Low floor, high ceiling.
▶ Play it nowBuilt for sittings of about 25 minutes on the screen. That is our design budget, not a measurement.
#0E8C7F Characters who teach
Meet the cast
VaultForge's characters are realistic people, not mascots, and each one stands for one idea in cryptography and online security. Cassia shifts every letter to make a code, Freya cracks it by counting letters, Pax and Sela act out how public and private keys work, Hana turns any message into a fingerprint that can't be reversed, and Mox does clock math. Vesna, Kai, and Ivo cover hiding messages in plain sight, breaking a code from a known piece, and spotting fake login pages. Sen is the mentor who keeps every challenge on the ethical side.
Cassia
Substitution / shift cipher — shifts every letter by a fixed amount (Caesar)
Freya
Frequency analysis — counts letter frequencies to crack a substitution
Pax
Public-key exchange (sender) — locks a box with the recipient's public key (Pax + Sela = key-exchange case)
Sela
Public-key exchange (recipient) — opens it with her private key
Hana
Hashing / one-way — turns any input into a fixed fingerprint you can't reverse
Mox
Modular arithmetic — wraps numbers around a clock (the math behind ciphers)
Vesna
Steganography — hides a flag inside an innocent cover
Kai
Known-plaintext / crib attack — uses a known snippet to break the rest
Ivo
Phishing / social-engineering awareness (defensive) — spots the fake login before anyone clicks
Sen
Mentor — sets the challenge, keeps it white-hat, guides reflect-on-approach (the AAR guide)
What's inside
Learning goal
Crack the code, capture the flag — a white-hat cryptography / cybersecurity puzzle game for ages 15–18. Solve scaffolded crypto and forensics-lite challenges (substitution, frequency analysis, modular arithmetic, public-key intuition, hashing) to capture flags, and build defensive cyber awareness. Low floor, high ceiling.
Question kits
16 curriculum-aligned question kits, 400 questions in all, mapped to recognized standards.
How VaultForge handles your kid's data
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ Free — no ads, no in-app purchases
- ✅ No personal information collected from children — in line with COPPA (updated by the 2026 FTC amendments)
- ✅ No chat with strangers — play-together rooms use a short code and preset emotes, never typed messages
VaultForge runs on ForgeKit — the open-source Swift Package Manager framework that powers every Spark & Anvil app. ForgeKit ensures consistent accessibility, COPPA compliance, and design language across the portfolio, so your kid's progress and preferences feel coherent across every app they touch.
Coming to the App Store
VaultForge is in active development. Email us to hear when it ships — no marketing, no spam, just a one-shot launch announcement.
Email me at launch
