Locktale

Locktale is a story-driven puzzle game in which players decode hidden messages to gradually uncover a narrative. Each message is protected by a cipher, symbol system, visual trick or logic challenge, and the story is revealed piece by piece as the player works through the puzzles. The developer describes it as a no-pressure experience, with no time limits or penalties for taking a slow approach.

The game contains more than 50 levels, and every level introduces a new encoding method, so no two puzzles rely on the same trick. The ciphers range from techniques used in antiquity through to methods drawn from modern cryptography, alongside a number of symbol-based systems created specifically for the game. To keep the puzzles approachable for newcomers, each level offers three tiers of hints, from minimal to detailed, giving different clues towards the solution.

All puzzles are designed to be solvable using only information found within the game itself, without external reference material. Some levels require returning to earlier puzzles to recover extra keys or data, others involve studying the hints or switching the game’s UI theme to find additional clues, and later levels combine previously learned methods into more complex ciphers.