If brainy aliens invented their own word-search game, it might look like LOK Digital. Scan a grid of letters for keywords (such as 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 we journey further into the universe of the cute and curious Loks, we can pick up some of their words – and the best way to use them – all on our 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.