Last updated on November 23rd, 2025 at 05:40 am
Cryptogram Tale – Puzzle Game Review
Cryptogram Tale is a Puzzle/Word game from GammaLateral LLC, first launched in 18th February 2015.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 1,526+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Cryptogram Tale Stand Out
Break the code and unravel the story!
Can you decode all of the passages and discover the story within?
Challenge yourself with this puzzle word game!
A Cryptogram is a message encoded by switching the actual letters with different letters.
• Hundreds of Tales!
• Thousands of Cryptograms!
• Dozens of Fonts!
• Different color schemes!
• Hints for when you're stuck!
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Cryptogram Tale is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 18th August 2025
Recent improvements include:
• New Tales
- Three new Classic tales.
- One new Long tale.
- Three new Poems.
• Bug Fixes - Fixed crash in Classic Tale 6.
- Fixed wrong text in Poem 59.
- Fixed spelling mistake on Classic Tale 43.
- Fixed spelling mistake on Long Tale 10.
Download & Availability
Cryptogram Tale is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Cryptogram Tale on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
The gameplay is very enjoyable, but we cant close the ads that occasionally pop up. The x is too far in the corner. We end up having to close and reopen the game to continue playing.
Im sure that if we actually knew how to solve these this would be a great fun. But we dont know, maybe its because Im only 10. But you know. We want to know how to do this. But we dont.
The only issue we have with this game is that every ad we get is one we cant close. The little x is so tiny and so far up in the corner that it wont let us hit it. In order to get back to the game, we have to close the app completely, and restart it. This makes it impossible to watch a video for a hint, as well. Its really frustrating.
Could be fun except the ad x to close the ad is in an impossible-to-reach position, & we will not be exiting & restarting the app every level because its not good enough to be worth it.
Wanted to enjoy the game but the ads are unbearable. We literally was not able to hit the x and had to close the app every time.
Is it us or is there no order to this game, its random letters assigned to other random letters. Its just a guess and check game.
We really like the game – quirky stories, good functionality. HOWEVER, the ads lock up the game CONSTANTLY! It is ridiculously frustrating and Im now looking for an alternative game. Please fix this issue! The last update said this was fixed but its just getting worse.
If you like cryptograms this app is definitely worth your while. We like that it has a good variety of different styles from short tales, ancient tales, poems, and other styles of writing. And with a repertoire of different authors each cryptogram exposes you to a different style of writing. What makes it even more fun for us, is that, by the time youre done with a cryptogram you will have also read a new book or story, which can take as long as you want (you can pick how lengthy a tale you wanna tackle and it saves your progress automatically so you can take as many days, months, or years to finish one). And if you get bored you can always work on a new one or go back and pick off where you left off on an old one. Id also like to add, the developer was very responsive when we submitted feedback about a small bug we came across on a prior version which was fixed pretty quickly on the next update. Thank you for taking our feedback.
Hey! This is really fun. If you like word games go for it.
One of the sentences in one of the grams was, One bright morning in the Chicago lying-in hospital, a man named Edward K. Wehling, Jr. Uh,…yeah? What about him? Im easily confused, we guess, but we hate bad grammar. Ill find another.
How wonderful it is to decipher an entire story instead of the typical parables, homilies, axioms, etc. Found in most other cryptogram apps. This is challenging.
We used to do these in the newspaper in the 80s and there was only 1 per day so Im truly enjoying the large amount of these along with the music. Great stories that really give your brain a work out! Im hoping that when we finish this one there will be more in the future.
Wonderful idea using stories instead of quotes. Hours of enjoyment to be had. We would give it 5 stars if not for the inane short stories of M. Stanley Bubien. His contrived dribble passing for sentimentality or irony makes us cringe. And his nonsense accounts for a third of the short story inventory. Please. No more. Otherwise keep up the great work.
Can you add to the list crypto quizzes as described in a famous puzzle company, such as movies of the 90s (includes The Lion King, Braveheart, The Little Mermaid, Rain Man, etc), not to mention more quotations and long stories? We hope so.
Wish we could purchase for a reasonable amount and not have to sit through the same 5 ads. We really enjoyed the first tale.
We loved the old version of this game on a background of parchment. New backgrounds just give us headaches. Have to delete the game.
Errors are accepted and you have to use hints to find mistakes. You quickly run out of hints and then have to earn them by watching videos. Automatic ad videos earn nothing but annoyance.
Interfere with a good idea. The story telling is not so good and those adverts you have to go through are VERY annoying. We deleted it in favor of other cryptanalysis apps.
Enjoyed solving the story, but the ads for other games after solving one part were too hard to get rid of. Deleted.
Passages contain spelling errors, including florescent.
First off they are titled things like classic 2 classic 47 or such like that and we don't know what the actual title of the story is…. Then you can sort by author but they don't say who the author is so that doesn't help. And if you pick a story despite all that they don't give you the key letter that helps you even begin in the right direction of solving it properly.
Updates with more stories, easy to use and play.
We love this app. Solving cryptograms while reading classic literature. It forces us to pay attention to how the masters honed their craft. Excellent entertainment across multiple genres.
It's a great way to wind down at night or to pass a little bit of time. We love that theres an ongoing story with it. It really sets it apart from other games like it.
We are not that into cryptograms, but gradually revealing a story as you decode is really entertaining. Our spouse and we spent all evening on the first dystopian story, deciding to buy the full version after 15 minutes, and it boggles our mind how much content is included with this. This is right up there with GeoGuessr for repeat entertainment value.
This is our favorite game. But it is frozen and Im in th middle of war of the worlds.
Its like reading and solving a puzzle at the same time! The stories are enjoyable to read, the gameplay is fun, the interface is user-friendly. Our new favorite game.
Only game we play that first freezes, then crashes our iPhone 15 Pro, impervious to repeated manual attempts to reboot. The whole freeze, lock, crash, restart process takes 10-15 minutes to complete, and happens at minimum twice a day. Bad enough that its so annoying, but killing our time and our phone is wearing us out. To reiterate, we have had no other game in the years Ive used mobile apps, cause this issue. Please address, help, fix so we can go back to the 5 Star Joy this game has given us.
We love cryptograms, so to do entire stories is a lot of fun. Unfortunately, lots of the classic stories are becoming more disturbing/offensive as we move from one to the next, and we feel that Im usually pretty gracious with others taste. We do believe that good literature should make people think, but after so many of these stories, Im really starting to wonder who selects them. There are so many stories, which is super cool, but Im starting to lose interest due to the selection. We wish there was more variety.
This game falls into the cash trap of we cant load ads even if you have great internet. This happens some times in other mobile games too.
Love it relaxing works your brain.
This game is amazing! You can reveal tantalizing stories that are interesting and impactful, while at the same time training your brain. We love this app.
We cant get the game to load it quits on the GammLateral screen before the game loads then it kicks us out of the app please fix Ive uninstalled reinstalled like 12 times please fix this thank you.
This is one of the best cryptogram ideas we have ever in 82 years of solving this kind of puzzles.
We love solving cryptograms and this is a great way for us to wind down at the end of the day. We have completed almost all of them though, so please update with some new tales.
It is great that each cryptogram gives you part of a whole story. Love this app.
Its like reading and solving a puzzle at the same time! The stories are enjoyable to read, the gameplay is fun, the interface is user-friendly. Our new favorite game.
This harder than most one liners and you want to read the hole thing. It keeps you going. It also does not show wrong letters so you have to work it over to figure it out.
We never take the time to review games, but this one is so good, we want to give our thanks to the developers with a review. The ad free version is worth paying for, since theres so much content you can literally play this game for years before solving every story. There are tons of stories and poems available, and you can see how long each one is before you choose to start it. Ive been playing for months and Ive solved around 5 classic stories so far. If you need a hint, you dont have to pay anything, just watch an ad, and Ive only used 8 hints in the past few months, so ad watching is a rare thing. This game is a lot more fun than regular cryptogram games because you get rewarded with a whole story to read as you solve, rather than just a little saying or quote. We love this game.
We look forward to new ones. More sci-fi than we would like. Would love more Sherlock.
We really enjoy this. The level of difficulty is not to bad. The only thing that we would maybe consider is that the space between the letters gets confusing. This may be part of the puzzle though. If thats the case then it makes sense why it can be confusing at first. We really enjoy the story and how it keeps going as you finish each puzzle. We love science and space. We dont want to give away spoilers. The story is very good and is based on non fiction. Its not some stupid 3 in a row junk. Thats all any of the other puzzles or games have lost value. Even for the younger kids this is a great way to learn how to solve , read, write, and figure out how sentences are written or the correct way to use English, punctuation, spelling. We would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to do any of the above things we mentioned for any of the reasons. Also a great way to brush up on some basic and strategic thinking.
Love this puzzle game! Not a lot of ads! Its gives yu a story line to follow. Which makes more easy and exciting to complete.
Sometimes we need a hint and the ad won't go away after the 30 seconds. Tap the x; it shows us the App Store.Lost many hints this way.
Its a cool idea and worth checking out, but its not as well made as Id like. The keyboard should open when you select a letter. The default font is poorly rendered we suggest switching fonts if that bothers you. There is no undo button, which would be very useful. The fact that capitalized words are revealed, but only after you enter the first letter, is a bit weird. Worst though the stories arent consistently well-suited to be cryptograms. Ive run into several problems already playing the first story on the hardest mode: There was a name with a middle initial that didnt appear elsewhere in the segment, so theres no way to figure that out other than guessing letters one by one. Long conversations make the segments too easy because of the repeated phrases like said the orderly. The story has a long list of made-up slang terms, which made several segments near impossible, because they had no common words and few real words.
The app started out great. It was a fun way to pass the time. The tales are interesting. They arent impossibly hard to solve. Earning hints was easy (just watch an ad or two). But the last couple of days Ive not been able to earn any hints because of the placement of the close button on the ads. We play on our phone and the close button is in the upper right hand corner. Its happened quite a few times before. We would simply close the app, reopen it, and watch a different video. But like we said, for the last couple of days, the only videos we get are ones with the close button where we cant click it. Its been at least a year since the last update, so Im not hopeful about getting another one soon enough to solve this issue. Id rate this higher if we could properly utilize all of the features.
When did they add ads to this? The ads keep showing up after evey line. Its making it unplayable. And why is it $5 to get rid of ads? We used to like this game but now its just sad.
Why is there no free letter to start you out? Youre just throwing a guess out and hoping its right how dumb is that? The newspaper gives you a free letter why dont you.
Great game but its constantly running super long ads. Some of the ads are over 30 seconds long and they appear after every passage is solved and when asking for hints. It seems when you watch an ad for a hint, those ads are annoyingly long. Going to finish the story Im working on and then deleting this app, the ads just make it unbearable. Also, this app tracks your location (we dont remember agreeing to it but thats on us) as it runs super long ads targeted to your area.
When we play we cant finish the tape without using up all our hints, and we have no idea what the tale is supposed to be. Classic Tale 1? Not a tale Im familiar with.
The very first story is draws you in with resolving lifes hardships and then it turns to murder and suicide. There is no good ending besides more of the same. Deleted.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 12
- Size: 132.85 MB
- iOS: 17.1 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor, Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Simulated Gambling
- Developer: GammaLateral LLC
Last updated: 18th August 2025 | Genre: Puzzle, Word | Developer: GammaLateral LLC