REVIEW : Sokobos (PC)
To play Sokobos, players must have the intellect of Daedalus or be blessed by Athena, as this hard puzzle title will have you roaming through 60 various levels that will have you more bewildered than Loki walking the halls of Olympus. Play as Aeschylus (not the tragic Aeschylus), a man endowed with power comparable to Hercules’. After swearing a pledge to the gods to preserve his father’s town’s prosperity, he must build a temple for Zeus, the ruler of Olympus, all by himself, pledging to return to his wife, Berenice, and their family once he is finished.
To begin, I’d want to point out that one of Sokobos’ weakest points is its storytelling, especially as Aeschylus rarely speaks outside of the occasional quip at the start of some levels, not building much on what happens throughout. Even if he did, it makes logical that he doesn’t, because you don’t get to say much to yourself when you’re building a temple. He was so silent, though, that I was persuaded he was a Harpocrates disciple.
Sokobos’ main goal is to build the opaque figure in the temple with the items dispersed across the level in as few moves as possible. That being said, the game does not have a move limit for you to accomplish each puzzle, so you should be able to enjoy playing it regardless of whether you want to obtain the fewest number of moves or just enjoy building the temple.
I was scared that if I didn’t focus on moving as little as possible through the levels, I’d breeze through them and trivialise Sokobos’ premise, but after level 7 — the first of many times I got stuck — I knew that wouldn’t happen.
All of the puzzles in Sokobos are cleverly designed, with new concepts and rules that feel unique to the title, such as “don’t move any particular object to hug a wall, or you won’t be able to take it out.” These new features I had to work around proved difficult, as I repeatedly found myself getting stuck — oddly, every two levels. One thing worth noting is that Sokobos has a method where you may hide the move tracker entirely if you don’t want to know how you did.
This also removes the leaderboards, so you can’t see what others’ minimum moves were or reveal your own, which helped my self-esteem tremendously.
I was trying to build a temple to the almighty lord of thunder when I got stuck. I had to try and repeat levels several times, make silly mistakes, and try again. Building the temple became borderline Sysiphean, as I kept making silly mistakes that caused me to go back, and moves I made early in the challenge frequently screwed me up later.
Fortunately, Sokobos includes a feature that allows you to either completely restart the level or undo the previous move you made.
Because it is so simple to undo a mistake, I found myself rewinding time with such ease that I may as well have been Kronos. I could redo a misclick with a single button press, saving me from having to retake the full level.
