If brainy aliens invented their own word-search game, it might look like LOK Digital. Scan a grid of letters for keywords (like LOK and TLAK) to trigger special abilities. Each activated word lets you change the board—shading in spaces or adding new letters—until every cell is blacked out. As you uncover new twists and tweaks, each puzzle becomes a little more complex—and a lot more fun to solve.

What we love: Feeling like linguistic geniuses. As you journey further into the universe of the cute and curious Loks, you’ll pick up some of their words—and the best way to use them—all on your own. It’s like learning a secret language!

Quick tip: Adjacent letters can actually be on opposite sides of the board, so long as they’re connected by filled in cells, X squares, or air gaps.

Meet the creator: Spanish indie developer Ferran Ruiz Sala was smitten with the pen-and-paper puzzle book LOK—so much so that he built a digital prototype and sent it to LOK’s creator, Slovenian artist Blaž Urban Gracar. The pair collaborated remotely for two years to make LOK Digital.