The most interesting game at last week’s Day of the Devs showcase is also the only one you can play today. During the livestream, developers Blaz Urban Gracar and Ferran Ruiz Sala explained that LOK Digital – a video game adaptation of a puzzle book created by Gracar – is like a word search puzzle using an invented language. As you progress through the game you learn new words, which each have their own unique properties, before using them to solve more complex puzzles.
I’ve been playing LOK Digital non-stop for a few days, and while I haven’t exactly learned how to speak a new language, I have started thinking in one. Learning the rules of LOK and using its strange vocabulary to solve puzzles is definitely doing something weird to my brain. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but I’m not going to stop.
Learning How To LOK
LOK is one of those games that starts simple and very quickly evolves into mind-bending madness. Each puzzle is represented as a grid of tiles, some blank and some with letters. The goal is to blackout every tile on the grid by spelling words. The first word you learn is LOK, and whenever you find it from then onwards you black out one additional tile. LOK can be spelled forward or backward, up or down.
Any black tiles are ignored, so each time you blackout a tile you’ll potentially be creating new paths to connect previously disconnected letters. So you might see a horizontal row that reads LOLK, but if you can manage to black out the second L, you’ll be able to spell LOK. That’s where a lot of the complexity comes from.
The rest of the complexity comes from the ever-growing dictionary of words. The next word you learn is TLAK, and whenever you spell it you then black out two adjacent tiles. Next is TA, which allows you to block out every tile with the same symbol. After that you learn about X, a letter that is used to change directions when connecting other letters. Now you can spell words that start in a horizontal row but end in a vertical column. This simple new rule completely turns the way you look at these puzzles on its head.
LOK, TLAK, And TA Your Worries Away
The most recent word I learned is BE, which allows you to write a letter – any letter – on a blank tile. To be honest, I don’t know if my brain can handle anything more complicated than that. I’m only working with four words and eight letters right now and I feel like I’m at my maximum mental capacity. Is this blank supposed to be an A to spell TLAK, or an O to spell LOK? Or maybe it’s an X, and the TL connects with the OK over there, but then I need to find a LOK to clear the X, or a TA, or maybe another BE. TA, TLAK, LOK. LOKTALKTABELOKTLAK.
It’s a little unsettling when your entire inner monologue becomes an endless string of nonsense syllables, but that’s what it takes to sort out these complicated puzzles. It reminds me of The Witness. Both games build on the knowledge of puzzles you’ve previously solved in such a fascinating way. If someone walked up and watched you play LOK they’d never be able to figure out what the hell you’re doing. You need to build that knowledge base over a sequence of puzzles and synthesize all that information together.
So while it’s not exactly like learning another language, LOK Digital certainly taps into the language center in your brain and makes it cooperate with the problem-solving part in a way that’s both uncomfortable and exciting. I’m going to keep at it for now, but if my articles start becoming infected with LOK TLAK TA speech, you’ll know why.
LOK Digital is available now on Steam and on Android and iOS on January 23rd.
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