If you need a relaxing holiday vacation game, download this one

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Table of Contents Learning LOK’s language Word searches, evolved

This has been the busiest December for games in recent memory. This month alone, we’ve seen the massive launches of Marvel Rivals, Infinity Nikki, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Those games have probably sucked up all of your time and attention, and that’s on top of The Game Awards 2024 flooding gaming spaces with several new announcements. That has caused games like LOK Digital, which launched in the thick of all this, to fly under the radar.

LOK Digital is one of the best puzzle games released in a year full of outstanding ones. It’s a glorified word search for a fictional alien language, but it’s also ridiculously clever in how it bends its own rules to create some head-scratching puzzles. LOK Digital is a fitting game for the holidays, something that you can easily install and play on a laptop while hanging out with friends or family. It’s also a reminder to look outside the traditional gaming zeitgeist in its busiest moments. That’s often where some true hidden gems are waiting to be discovered.

Learning LOK’s language

LOK Digital is the video game adaption of a word search puzzle book created Blaž Urban Gracar that got a surprise release during Day of the Devs’ The Game Awards 2024 showcase. To solve a puzzle, players must blacken every cell presented to them by spelling out fictional words like “lok,” “tlak,” “ta,” and “lolo,” with the letters that appear on many of those titles. That’s easier than it sounds.

Letters have to be connected to spell out a word, and each word lets players black out cells after it is spelled. For example, spelling out “lok” always lets me — and requires me to — blacken out a single cell. When I spell “ta” I can select any letter on the board and blacken all spaces with that same letter. As solving a puzzle requires players to black out all cells perfectly, sometimes the most obvious spellings I would see in my