The end:

Thank you all so much for celebrating my cake day with me. I'm sorry all I had were some bundle games, but some of them are pretty good fun. :)

For anyone who was interested and didn't manage to solve it, I'm glad my "reverse hint" didn't give it away -- I thought that might ruin the puzzle -- but I'm sorry if my hints weren't good enough, too! :)

The five-character text string after each game was obviously the steamgifts giveaway link, but it was 'encoded' by typing the keys on a standard US English - style QWERTY keyboard with a DVORAK keyboard layout activated. Believe it or not, I actually do this every day -- I learned to type DVORAK many years ago, but haven't ever got around to buying a DVORAK keyboard. So I just don't look, so as to not confuse myself. :D

This keyboard layout was apparently invented in 1936 to improve typing speed, since the familiar QWERTY layout had actually been designed to ensure that mechanical typewriters did not operate too quickly and end up jamming the individual metal rods associated with each letter. Hence my first clue.

The second hint was simply a reverse of the others to give people a chance to know what the unencoded and encoded text was: HuniePop when typed on a QWERTY keyboard with a DVORAK keyboard layout activated is Dgbc.Lrl.

I hope you enjoyed the little puzzle. Steamgifts is great; it's the only site I visit multiple times each day. Thank you all for making it a fun place. :)


Update! Here's a reverse hint and the final GA for anyone having trouble:

Dgbc.Lrl: j0VHk

So it's my factory/cake day. Fancy that! I knew it was sometime this month, but had no idea when.

Anyway, I had this plan for this really involved puzzle featuring all sorts of clever-clod stuff and a train that was going to be called "The Bundle Boobie Train" or something like that, but I ran out of time and motivation and work takes up too much of my life and then I got stuck playing 7 Days to Die ... . Yeah, I know. You've heard it all before, I'm sure.

So instead of that, here are some puzzlified links to a list of what was going to be restricted to only bundle boobie games, but now has some other mostly anime-inspired games in there as well.

"What's the puzzle?" I hear you ask. Well, you see I typed the links really quickly and now they don't seem quite right.

Animal Lover: BteBa
Aozora Meikyuu: Qy63>
Beach Bounce: 3ao9C
Club Life: 7hIQG
Crystal City: T;YN2
Darconika: The Cube of Soul: KRbB;
Désiré: oOPYa
Divine Slice of Life: ayGXa
Echo Tokyo: An Intro: <XHDn
eden*: T>u5,
Games&Girls: hPilT
Heart and Seoul: OMrmy
Highschool Possession: Kpo>X
Highschool Romance: qB">9
Higurashi when they Cry Hou - Ch. 1 - Onikakushi: NeHD7
HunieCam Studio: <"iu,
Love in the Glen: KcH8D
Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle: x>ELI
Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle : School Girls Edition: 0d9O6
My Personal Angel: KeHAg
Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire: .9>Ik
Sakura Angels: u8;k0
Sakura Beach: bjje8
Sakura Beach 2: ItMR.
Sakura Fantasy: IpMDN
Sakura Spirit: uTned
Serafina's Crown: 6rLoa
Sixtieth Kilometre: 4;Cen
True Lover's Knot: t>91J
World End Economica Episode 01: ieF3<

They're all level 1 because it's really easy to get to level 1, even if you're really poor.

Oh, some of these games are from group buys of bundles, too, so I'm really sorry if the keys don't work. They should, but you know, sometimes these things happen. And I'm really, really sorry if some of my fast typing is wrong. If you can't work any of them out then please let me know; I probably made a mistake. sigh

And for the adult games, please don't enter unless you're an adult, blah, blah, blah. I have no way of checking, obviously. Well, I guess I could ask my buddy in the NSA, but I'm not supposed to talk about him The Universal Moderator. Aw crap. Just forget I said that. There, that's better, right?

Happy factory day to me, happy factory day to me, ...

Edit: Sorry, I found an error in Darconika. It's fixed now.

6 years ago*

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Wow, I'm amazed. Never heard of DVORAK keyboard, thanks for sharing!

6 years ago
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I think that most if not all of those who don't have English as their mother language would have never been able to solve it.
I, for example, have never heard of a DVORAK keyboard.

Still, nice (and hard) puzzle.

6 years ago
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There was no way I could have solved the puzzle as I never heard of DVORAK keyboard until now. Congrats to the winners and thanks for sharing.

6 years ago
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