Lekta - language puzzle
A downloadable game for Windows
Lekta is a language puzzle game which generates a new language each time you play.
The puzzles need you to understand the language to solve them.
Find texts in the world and decode them to progress.
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Lekta is sort of inspired by tasks from the Oxford MLAT (their admissions test for languages & linguistics). They give students invented or unfamiliar languages and the questions challenge them to work out what they mean. They're actually quite fun to do, so I thought a game based on that premise could work (but with fire and bears..).
People who've studied linguistics will find this easier than people who haven't, but really it's just a big puzzle. It does all work logically, and each text is supposed to teach you some vocab or grammar or help with what to do in the world.
I tried to make it so that anyone can play it, so click to move, with the TOOLS and TEXTS options down the right and left - click to use a tool or read a text. And you can click and drag the texts to view more than one at once. The arrow keys work for movement too.
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If you get stuck, I made an explainer video:
..there is a hints page here to start you off:
https://pandateam.itch.io/lekta-hints-page
..and this document explains some relevant language ideas (see screenshot):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nrt8xSslKq2UI5PDEgKAsaP5eB3HreCCCvIgbZdzF5A/...
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* THIS IS A PLAYABLE ALPHA - EXPECT SOME ROUGH EDGES *
Updates:
23.4.24 - 2nd verified clear :)
21.4.24 - fixed a bug that was causing a serious problem with one item in inventory; sorted out movement so using the GUI no longer counts as a click to move the player. The bug was behaving oddly so if anyone has problems, let me know in comments and I'll tackle it again. Next up: will probably add an easy(er) mode..
13.4.24 - another big-ish update -> changed default zoom level so everything's a bit more readable; fixed a strange bug where one text wouldn't let you collect it; tidied up the zooming so it remembers your zoom level changing rooms and after viewing texts; made potatoes a possibility for cooking bit and added them to inventory icons; made one room handle lots of ingredients better; upped the scale it draws on of the texts at (was a bit small before)
6.4.24 - raised max frame rate to 60 FPS; added camera zoom (as several people have mentioned it) and it works, but making the texts all draw while zoomed in would take a lot of reworking so it zooms you back out when you view a text (You can just zoom back in again afterwards if that's your preference)
17.2.24 - big-ish update, smoothing difficulty curve a bit & fixing some bugs. Added a new location & updated map; rejigged location of some items to give more natural progression; updated spade text to be more obvious; fixed annoying bug if you entered interiors from above; made edges of the chasm look a bit better; added highlights to pickable-uppables, to make the stick especially more obvious; tidied up the objects GUI panel, which was messy and not very readable
3.2.24 - added varieties of mushroomm, partly to teach negation better; switched to more clearly readable font on charcoal sketchbook page; eliminated a sneaky way you could circumvent final puzzle; sorted an annoying bug with the texts GUI panel not highlighting texts that are being drawn
26.1.24 Verified clears: [ 1 ]
21.1.24 - added a baby bear
20.1.24 - PUBLIC release - tidied up the victory room and added option to enter name for credits for alpha testers who complete it; improved falling script a bit
16.1.24 - made it a bit easier to infer how negation works (added an extra instance of it, was probably too hard before)
14.1.24 - improved the syllable generation code & vocab allocation code; added a new way of marking plurality; added new house with interior to try to space out player getting texts to more digestible sequence; tweaked map to include new house
1.1.24 - added tips page to try and help stuck people (I might do a little explanation of what concepts like plurality/negation/morphology are at some point..)
28.12.23 - tweaked fires a bit, sparks can now set other things alight and spread the fire
26.12.23 - added save slots; fancified the fog a bit
Download
Development log
- How much puzzle/how much world?25 days ago
Comments
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Oh wow! This was a concept that I was wondering if people had made into a game. Really cool idea! I will definitely give your game a try.
I was also wondering if the syntax and morphology are procedurally generated as well? Or if not, will you be trying to implement that in the future?
Ah, great! It's nice that someone likes the idea! :) (I know it's quite niche)
Yes, the morphology is randomly generated, within some constraints -> so e.g. plurality and tense can be marked by prefixes/suffixes (or in a couple of other ways), and if it is affix-based then the affixes are picked randomly from the possible high-frequency morphemes it generates (i.e. shortish ones). I would like to make the syntax choose randomly more (e.g. between SVO/SOV/VSO/whatever, and maybe head-initial or head-final structure) but every extra thing makes the code a bit messier, and also until the player's got some nouns to work with it's hard to do much with other classes, so at the moment (in this build) tense isn't really involved/needed to understand things. So I haven't tackled that yet. I do want to do some tense puzzles later on though, definitely 👍👍