Wraith Kryptos: Crack The Code
- Brand
- Rolls-Royce
- Year
- 2020
- Objective
- Product Launch
- Industry
- Automotive
- Mechanic
- Puzzle
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- AKQA
Objective
Rolls-Royce built the Wraith Kryptos collection around a cryptographic theme, but only 50 people would ever own one. To pull a wider audience into the story anyway, the brand and AKQA turned the collection's puzzle motif into a public challenge — a way to invite enthusiasts who'd never buy the car to engage with the marque, generate digital leads, and stir up social conversation around a car most of them would never see in person.
Solution
Open the game on your phone and you're dropped into a four-level gauntlet that gets harder as you go. First you tilt the phone to steer a ball through a maze against the clock, then answer a run of cryptography trivia, then pass an observation test that checks how closely you've been paying attention. The final level hands you the real puzzle: Morse code, a Caesar cipher, and similar ciphers to crack in sequence. Solve them all and you decrypt the closing message that ends the game — and if you're one of the first ten players to finish, Rolls-Royce sends you a personalized treadplate from the car itself.
Results
Digital lead generation rose 900%. Instagram engagement climbed 314% and Facebook engagement 50% in the first two weeks. All 50 cars in the Wraith Kryptos collection sold out before public release, making it one of the fastest-selling collections in the marque's history.
- 1
Players reach the challenge through the Wraith Kryptos collection page on the Rolls-Royce site, where a cryptographic challenge opens to the general public with no club registration required.
- 2
The game is framed as four levels of rising difficulty; players must clear each one in sequence to reach the final solution.
- 3
The first level is a timed ball-in-maze puzzle: the player tilts the phone to roll a ball through a maze before time runs out.
- 4
The second level tests cryptography knowledge through a set of questions the player answers or selects from, screening for familiarity with ciphers.
- 5
The third level is an observation challenge, asking the player to spot something hidden or out of place on screen.
- 6
The fourth level presents a set of final ciphers — including Morse code and the Caesar cipher — that the player must decode and submit as the answer.
- 7
Completing all four levels finishes the challenge; the brand offered the first ten finishers a personalised Rolls-Royce treadplate.
