Great explanation (including the pre-edit bit ha) - thank you!

When you say the cypher puzzle wouldn't be much fun - why not? Surely you could have a set of puzzles through the game that each yield a keyword (seemingly plot relevant, but still pretty random when combined with the others) and the player has to combine all of them via clues in game in the correct order to yield the correct key. That doesn't sound unfun on the surface?