Sokoban is at the spritual center of a relatively new (or newly invigorated) and pretty hardcore subgenre of puzzle games. Who knew there could be so many interesting ways to push blocks around in a grid? Some good ones are Heroes of Sokoban I, II and III[1][2][3], A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build[4], Stephen's Sausage Roll[5], Ferdy the Cat[6], Kine[7], Snakebird[8] and Baba is You[9].
Each and every one of these games have undo. That's critical for this type of game. Forcing the player to restart because of a single mistake is about the least interesting way to make a puzzle game more difficult.
Half of the pleasure of "baba is you" is to discover it. The game assumes this perfectly, and is actually structured to make that discovery part of the gameplay: it's incremental, pleasant, and it surprises you in good ways.
I sometime even laugh at the way the game designer played with me. With one specific block present or missing. With one rule you didn't know about, or didn't think about that way. It's communicating playfulness without a having to say a word.
I first encountered this back on the original GameBoy as Boxxle [0,1]. I recall finding it just as much of a challenge to create levels which worked! The music is just as good as I remember [2].
Cool, I wasn't even aware that "A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build" is a Sokoban-style game when I bought the Humble Conquer Covid-19 Bundle (https://www.humblebundle.com/conquer-covid19-bundle) a few hours ago (thanks for the opportunity to plug this, normally I don't do this kind of thing, but hey, it's for charity!) - guess this is one of the games I'll install first...
For a kind of similar game but with a bit of a twist (not pushing blocks, but rolling them) I highly recommend Bloxorz [0] although I should warn everybody that it's highly addictive.
This is pretty much the only good game on long haul flights, nowadays. It's the caveman version. You definitely don't get an undo, but you can cheat to get to higher levels as the passwords are only five characters long (and are dictionary words). Lots of carriers have it [1]
Sometimes you can play Zuma, but that's hit/miss with latency and I can never get past Khufu's Revenge.
Back in the long long ago, some airlines made a deal with Nintendo to put a SNES emulator in their entertainment system [2]. You could play Super Mario World, Zelda: A Link to the Past and other games. I only had the experience once, on a flight to Cape Town around 2002(?) and frankly I was a bit too young to appreciate what it was, but it somewhat spoiled me for inflight entertainment ever after.
Yes! I had this on a Virgin flight in 1999 as a kid. Was 10 years before I started travelling as an adult, and was sorely disappointed at how much _worse_ things had gotten
yes, I added the "sokoban" tag to my game page. As I said on other comment, the difference between QUBES and a classic sokoban game is that on QUBES the amount of moves you make counts.
It's not enough to solve the puzzle, you have to solve it the best way possible.
It's not the first sokoban game to score based on number of moves.
But heck, writing an original clone of an already-extant game is an interesting exercise especially for beginner game devs. So cherish the victory of having finished and released it!
Hi, I'm Victor Ribeiro, author of the game. Yesterday I was let go of my job due to COVID-19. After I got the news, I sat down on my notebook and made a quick port of QUBES to release on itch.io
I understand that the game is a not a 5 stars game and there's room for improvement, some requests I may implement on the next update, but, I'm now working on a new game that I plan to release soon.
I think this new game is more fun. I suggest following me on twitter, itch.io, youtube or github to check it out.
As I told, I'm not working right now so if you liked QUBES and want to support me and the developing of other games, I suggest you make a donation you itch.io, paypal or consider becoming a patreon.
Here I go by atum47, but on all other platforms I'm usually victorqribeiro. On youtube I'm always putting videos of my projects, my english is far from good, but I'm working on my pronunciation.
On GitHub I'm always publishing open source projects that might help others or even serve as a starting point for a project. IsoCity is a good example of that. There are people working on some cool new things using IsoCity as a foundation. So, make sure you take a look at my projects at GitHub also.
Thank you so much for playing the game and for the inputs/feedback.
My 4 year old is enjoying it. Interesting to watch him work through the process. Kept his attention for 15 minutes or so (which is pretty damn good). Thanks for sharing.
If the goal of the game is to complete a level in the fewest possible number of moves, you have to show that number and show a counter of how many moves I've made so far.
I'm holding the source code on this one for now, cause I'm trying to make a bucket out of it. But I'll release it soon enough. Check out my github for some other fun projects as well
by the way, the app version is a hybrid. I'm using java and javascript. I use a javascript interface to talk between the two. Java handles the ads and the data storage, the rest is javascript.
Readit News
Each and every one of these games have undo. That's critical for this type of game. Forcing the player to restart because of a single mistake is about the least interesting way to make a puzzle game more difficult.
1: https://sites.math.washington.edu/~ostroff/puzzles/Heroes_of...
2: https://sites.math.washington.edu/~ostroff/puzzles/Heroes_of...
3: https://sites.math.washington.edu/~ostroff/puzzles/Heroes_of...
4: https://agoodsnowman.com
5: https://www.stephenssausageroll.com
6: https://ferdythecat.com
7: https://www.kinegame.com
8: https://noumenongames.itch.io/snakebird
9: https://www.hempuli.com/baba/
Half of the pleasure of "baba is you" is to discover it. The game assumes this perfectly, and is actually structured to make that discovery part of the gameplay: it's incremental, pleasant, and it surprises you in good ways.
I sometime even laugh at the way the game designer played with me. With one specific block present or missing. With one rule you didn't know about, or didn't think about that way. It's communicating playfulness without a having to say a word.
This game is a beautiful thing.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxxle
[1]: https://www.gameboyworks.com/1989/09/01/boxxle/
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKkQxZKTLWQ
http://pipepushparadise.com
0 - https://www.miniclip.com/games/bloxorz/en/
Sometimes you can play Zuma, but that's hit/miss with latency and I can never get past Khufu's Revenge.
Back in the long long ago, some airlines made a deal with Nintendo to put a SNES emulator in their entertainment system [2]. You could play Super Mario World, Zelda: A Link to the Past and other games. I only had the experience once, on a flight to Cape Town around 2002(?) and frankly I was a bit too young to appreciate what it was, but it somewhat spoiled me for inflight entertainment ever after.
[1] https://entertainment.ba.com/en/games/details/17 [2] https://snescentral.com/article.php?id=1019
It's not enough to solve the puzzle, you have to solve it the best way possible.
Big O notation?
But heck, writing an original clone of an already-extant game is an interesting exercise especially for beginner game devs. So cherish the victory of having finished and released it!
I understand that the game is a not a 5 stars game and there's room for improvement, some requests I may implement on the next update, but, I'm now working on a new game that I plan to release soon.
I think this new game is more fun. I suggest following me on twitter, itch.io, youtube or github to check it out.
As I told, I'm not working right now so if you liked QUBES and want to support me and the developing of other games, I suggest you make a donation you itch.io, paypal or consider becoming a patreon.
Here I go by atum47, but on all other platforms I'm usually victorqribeiro. On youtube I'm always putting videos of my projects, my english is far from good, but I'm working on my pronunciation.
On GitHub I'm always publishing open source projects that might help others or even serve as a starting point for a project. IsoCity is a good example of that. There are people working on some cool new things using IsoCity as a foundation. So, make sure you take a look at my projects at GitHub also.
Thank you so much for playing the game and for the inputs/feedback.
bad jokes aside, I designed it that way.
To move a long distance, I spam the direction until I hit the wall without care of 'wasted moves'.
I didn't understand why I didn't get the optimum moves the first time.
Regardless, thanks for developing the game and releasing it for free. I'm enjoying it while I'm stuck at home!
(And allow undo. See my other comment.)
Why?
I'm holding the source code on this one for now, cause I'm trying to make a bucket out of it. But I'll release it soon enough. Check out my github for some other fun projects as well