A $5 Wikipedia-like mystery game consumed me for 2 straight hours as I dug for clues about a little town and its big weird tree

Never trust a tree with a name like "Draken Oak". That is the lesson I took away from Lost Wiki: Kozlovka, a game where you solve a mystery by reading Wikipedia-like database entries. I took one look at that tree and knew nothing good was going on in the little Eastern European town I was investigating.

After a little over two hours, I had learned exactly what was up with that tree and the generational deceit that has haunted Kozlovka since the late 1800s. I knew this wasn't a normal job the moment my client told me I wasn't looking deep enough and sent me instructions on how to access entries redacted by the government. What I found was a story happening in between the lines of each wiki entry, one that would span decades and eventually come right back around to me, a journalist investigating the town in the '90s.

Lost Wiki: Kozlovka is a mystery game in the style of The Case of the Golden Idol or The Roottrees are Dead, where the objective is to fill in the blanks on reports with the names of people and things you've learned about. It starts by testing you on pretty basic information, like what the town of Kozlovka is known for (agriculture) and what's so special about the forest it borders (the weird tree). But then it asks you to piece together a family tree and a timeline of the horrific events that have occurred over the years.

I think describing this game as "Wikipedia-like" is more generous than it sounds. While there is a whole web of database entries to read, there's a noticeable lack of miscellaneous information or red herrings—which is to say that solving each report isn't particularly hard as long as you're thorough. I only felt like I was heading down a wiki rabbit hole in the first hour as I clicked every hyperlink trying to get a sense of Kozlovka's history and the people involved. After that, I mostly searched for pages I hadn't unlocked yet and specific details I needed, like dates and names.

Every page is organized into a web that you can use to quickly jump to things you've read before. It was a convenience I appreciated when I had to flip back and forth between emails and database pages to figure out the format of the various passwords you need to unlock the classified information. However, most of them are extremely obvious to the point that I found it a little hard to believe evidence of corruption and murder would be locked behind the kind of passwords I came up with when I was 12. But I guess if real U.S. government officials can leak classified information in group chats, a fictional European government could be just as inept.

If I wasn't so easily swayed by its fuzzy retro computer interface and the foreboding music, Lost Wiki: Kozlovka's simplicity might've disappointed me. But it isn't about the mystery so much as it's about the act of solving it. I slipped into a satisfying routine where I'd read through the report I needed to fill in and let it guide me to each page looking for relevant information. A few clues aren't even written on the pages themselves but hidden in the blurry photos attached to them. Faces and symbols reappear in different contexts which help you connect the dots on a larger timeline of events. And by the end, the reports become email replies to an increasingly desperate client who has secrets of their own to share.

Lost Wiki: Kozlovka manages to raise the stakes of the mystery without overaggrandizing its complexity. I had a general idea of what was going on about halfway through and yet I wasn't bothered when my theories were basically confirmed at the end. I think that's a testament to the game's tight focus and well-placed breadcrumbs rather than a flaw.

Even though the game is pitched as purely a mystery, it's also an exercise in identifying the gaps in public information and the context that's erased when people have the power to control it—a disturbing reminder of the very thing Wikipedia is fighting to prevent right now.

Lost Wiki: Kozlovka might not be a hard mystery to solve, but it had me eagerly clicking my way to the solution just to get the full picture of Kozlovka, its secrets, and that weird tree. It's $5 on Steam and worth every penny.