Sokobos Review

Players aspiring to undertake the task of playing Sokobos will have to carry the wit of Daedalus or be blessed by Athena, as this challenging puzzle title will have you roam through 60 different levels that will have you more perplexed than Loki roaming the halls of Olympus. Play as Aeschylus (a different Aeschylus, not the tragedian), a man blessed with strength that could match Hercules'. After making an oath to the gods to ensure his father's town's prosperity, he must build a temple for the ruler of Olympus — Zeus — all by his lonesome, promising that once he is done, he will return to his wife, Berenice, and their family.

Straight off the bat I’d like to mention that one of the weakest aspects of Sokobos is its storytelling, especially as Aeschylus rarely talks outside of the occasional comment at the start of some levels, not really building much on what happens throughout. Even if he were to comment more, it makes sense that he doesn’t, as you don’t really get to say much to yourself about building a temple. He was so silent, however, that I was convinced he was a follower of Harpocrates.

The main purpose of Sokobos is to build the opaque figure placed in the temple with the items scattered throughout the level with as few moves as possible. That said, the game doesn't have a move limit for you to finish each of the puzzles, so you should be able to enjoy playing it regardless of whether you want to get the least amount of moves or just enjoy building the temple.

My worry was that, if I didn't focus on moving the least amount I could throughout the levels, I would breeze through them and trivialise Sokobos' premise, yet at around level 7 — the first time of many that I got stuck — I knew that wouldn’t happen.

All of the puzzles for Sokobos are ingeniously built, with new mechanics coming into play and rules that feel unique to Sokobos as a title, such as “don't move any particular object to hug a wall, or you won't be able to pull it out”. These new mechanics I had to work around proved to be a challenge, as time and time again I found myself getting stuck — strangely enough, every two levels. One thing worthy of being mentioned is that Sokobos offers a system where you can disable the move tracker altogether if you don’t want to see how you fared. This also disables the leaderboards, not letting you see what were the minimum moves others have gotten nor disclosing your own, which worked wonders for my self-esteem.

There I was, trying to build a temple to the almighty lord of thunder, and I was stumped. Several times, I had to try and retry levels, make stupid mistakes, and try again. Building the temple became borderline Sysiphean, as I found myself making stupid mistakes that forced me to go back, and often moves I made early in the puzzle screwed me up later.

Thankfully, Sokobos has a built-in feature that allows you to either fully restart the level or undo the last move you made. Due to how simple it is to undo your mistake, I found myself rewinding time with so much ease, I might as well have been Kronos. A single press of a button, and I could redo a misclick, saving me from having to replay the entire level once again.

Sokobos is a deceptively simple-looking puzzle game that will feel as if you're traversing the Labyrinth from how lost you'll be in every other level. If you like racking your brain for answers, few games have ever made me think as hard as this one has.