Lock & Key

IF-Review
Death Becomes You
After a while, the requirement to match the PC's knowledge with the player's can begin to feel like a bit of a cage, and the most common contortions an IF game goes through to live inside it (such as amnesia) have long since lost their appeal. Even the freshest ones can still feel a bit tired and gimmicky unless done exactly right. The accretive PC is one key to this cage -- it's wonderfully refreshing to play a character who's really good at something, and even better to become good at it yourself. Of all the jail-breaks that happen in Lock & Key, this one is the most satisfying.
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IF-Review
Hand & Glove
The ways in which Boldo, the adventurer, keeps escaping your little traps (and the way in which the guards unwittingly aid him through their stupidity) range from amusing to hilarious, and are still funny the fifth time; they also change in subtle (or not-so-subtle) ways if you're making progress. Adam uses countless dei-ex-machina to aid the adventurer in his escape, but they're sufficiently ridiculous to make you forgive him.
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Play This Thing!
While the constraints and challenges are theoretically similar to the ones you'll find in traditional tower defense games, the feel is entirely different. Each kind of trap can be placed only once, and the sequence matters. There's a graphical component to the interface, so that you have some visual feedback when laying out the dungeon, but most of the interaction is through text commands, because Lock & Key is primarily a text adventure in form. And much of the game's entertainment value comes not from figuring out where to place traps -- though that makes a solid and rewarding puzzle -- but from the characters and their reactions.
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SPAG
Lock and Key works well, in short -- it's not revolutionary, and those who profess themselves unable to solve puzzles may find themselves stumped -- but as a puzzle and as another line in Adam's list of achievements, it's worth experiencing. (Duncan Stevens)
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SPAG

Making the perfect dungeon is difficult, and one is clearly intended to play the game many times and learn from one's mistakes. Playing through the game is lots of fun at first, but gets a bit tedious after a while. There are many hints that you are on the right track, but I think there could have been more of them, or they could have been clearer, otherwise you just have to guess what to do. (Øyvind Thorsby)
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