I've been playing LOK (https://draknek.itch.io/lok-digital)… it's a word-search-like game where you can only find specific made-up words (like "LOK") that each have some magic effect on the board once found.
It's not that bad, but…
One Lok note… The game states every mechanic is playable on paper, as printed puzzles, *except* for the pushable blocks. All of those are exclusive to one videogame-themed world - which I'll admit is finally an actual meaningful use of "retro aesthetic" for a secret area.
The other cool thing you can do is discover secret words, or later words in advance. You mostly do this by just dragging random lines along some of the puzzles, which is… fun? But not exactly a bolt of revelation compared to some other games' discoverable secret abilities.
Most of the whimsy in the game is in clicking on stuff in the map screens… although I'll gracefully admit that they do use a pleasant array of freesounds for this purely incidental feature.
To me it's got the usual "thinky puzzle game" problem where the intended tone is playful, saccharine and child-like (the titular LOKs) but the actual artistry (like the colour scheme) is so washed-out and inert that it can only appeal to adults.