LOK

LOK is a pen and paper puzzle game about discovering the hidden language of the Lok creatures. Through logical deduction, you’ll be shading blocks and using various powers from the creatures to solve these word puzzles. As this is a rule-discovery game, the initial tutorial pages primes players to keep their eyes open to new rules in which to solve puzzles.

Each word in the grid can be shaded in to activate abilities that let you shade more cells in—this is the core of LOK’s mechanics. The goal of each puzzle is to shade in the entire grid. Further into the book, you will discover more phrases which will allow you to shade cells in different ways, expanding your repertoire of abilities. The game expects you to figure out the rules yourself, and the correct rules will give you a solution for every puzzle.

Much like other rule-discovery games (for example, The Witness, Taiji, Understand), very few rules are made clear from the get-go. LOK introduces several new mechanics for you to figure out the rules yourself; these are simply tools to aid your process of discovery.

The game’s physical book form is a joy for hands-on players—there’s nothing more tactile than flipping through a book as you solve puzzles. The physical book comes with a plastic sheet, so that you can make notes with a whiteboard pen, but there is also a pay-what-you-want PDF version that you can print into a book yourself.

Sometimes, rules that you have discovered can be subtly incorrect. You can miss the forest for the trees, so you’ll have to reevaluate what you think you know. There are also plenty of hidden puzzles throughout the game, so curious players can take what they’ve learnt and apply their knowledge in previous areas to discover new elements of the world of LOK.

LOK creator Blaž Urban Gracar and game dev Raindrinker have collaborated on a digital version of the game, LOK Digital, where certain digital elements will be wholly unique to the game’s medium. Since some elements can only work on paper or in a digital game, it widens possibilities for players and allows for some really neat experimentation.

This description was written by Hira and edited by Oriane Tury.