Jigsaw - Static Puzzle Hunt Website Tool

I really enjoy participating in puzzle hunts (even though I rarely get past the first round). Since I tend to be pretty bad at them, I'm generally not remotely done by the time the hunt finishes, or even by the time the organisers shut the servers down.

Once a hunt's no longer live, it usually gets preserved as a static website (no login or other systems in place to record progress). This makes sense logistically, but can take away the magic of the hunt (it took a year before the 2019 Galactic's 'artifact' system saved progress post-hunt, until which it was essentially unsolvable). With every puzzle and round unlocked from the get-go, there's no surprises when the theme suddenly changes or a new meta is revealed. That, and with every puzzle unlocked at the same time, the incentive to stick with one puzzle that's giving you trouble gets reduced. This discourages those satisfying eureka moments that really make or break a hunt.

That's why I've been developing Jigsaw, a puzzle hunt website development tool for making static hunt websites that mimic live hunt functionality. The software is being designed to be very accessible to anyone with basic HTML, CSS and Javascript knowledge, as well as a providing an extensive set of well-documented tools that make the process as painless as possible.

Live hunt functionality like logins and progress are saved via your browser's localstorage, and can be downloaded and sent to friends (who can then instantly catch up to the same point in the hunt as you). Then, all you need to do is let your team know whenever you solve a puzzle, have everyone enter it into the site, and everyone's site stays in the same state!

Jigsaw is currently in beta testing, and once it is complete I'll be hosting versions of all my old (and new) puzzle hunts with it. It's likely I'll eventually split the software into Jigsaw Static (for static functionality post-hunt) and Jigsaw Live (for genuinely live hunts) so that you can host a hunt live with proper live functionality and have it already compatible with Jigsaw Static once the hunt ends.