The Sokoban genre – box pushing puzzle games – isn’t that popular in the general gaming world, so it was a nice surprise that Steam decided to put it under the spotlight in its newest official event, the Steam Box-Pushing Fest. The event might be over now, but make sure that doesn't stop you from decimating your wishlist with hundreds of discounted games, browsing for new ones to try out, or taking a look at the many upcoming games.
I played pretty much every demo that took part in the event, and below you'll find a few highlights and links to each game's Steam page. Have you played something that's not listed below? Join our Thinky Games Discord and let us know!
After Light Fades
While some games go for minimal mechanics, After Light Fades goes the other way, with dozens of puzzle elements and many more dozens of interactions between them. This makes the levels very challenging, since there are many ways you can combine the things in the level to get the key from one end of the room to the other, but only one of them is valid. Add on top of that a story, secrets, spells and collectibles, and you get a one of a kind game that promises many, many hours of thinky fun.
Club Soko
Clob Soko is the hottest club in town, full of people, bouncers and equipment. However, you're not here to dance, but to get deeper and deeper into the club and leave your name on every hidden wall. Cleverly push people around to outsmart the bouncers who keep you away from the doors.
Double Trip
A lovely game, you control two characters that must coordinate to solve box-pushing puzzles and reach the exit. Positions that would be impossible in a regular sokoban suddenly become feasible when you carefully pass the box from one player to the other. And it looks good, sounds good, and has challenging puzzles!
Gentoo Rescue
A strong candidate for the hardest thinky game this year, this is a huge open-world puzzle with a lot of mechanics. Help animals reach their target spots by sliding on ice. Use plenty of tools, like springs, hammers or rockets. Discover strange interactions, automatically documented in the in-game journal. Explore nested and recursive levels. Gain new powers and revisit impossible levels. And on top of that, it’s all so cute!
Handshakes: Hands On
The first Handshakes game, which you can download and play for free right now, showcased some excellent mechanics, but it always felt like the levels barely scratched the surface of what is possible. The amazing mechanics of two long arms trying to meet and shake hands promise a lot of challenging levels.
Hazard Pay
In this interestingly themed Sokoban, you play as a cleaner trying to remove all evidence of an industrial accident: dissolve bodies in acid vats, mop up blood, and pack up everything that doesn’t belong in the level. Excellent immersive mechanics that make the levels feel not like abstract busy work, but a real work day out in the field. Great puzzles in a polished implementation, with a bonus leaderboard if you want to compete against your friends.
He Who Watches
Despite the dungeon crawler feeling that the trailer inspires, this is a proper Sokoban game. But instead of a 2D grid, you play in a 3D environment in which gravity is not fixed. You can climb on any surface, and your own gravity always follows your feet. And instead of just pushing boxes, you hook them with your bow, and then they follow you at a fixed distance, until they hit a wall or you drop them, falling in the direction that your feet are pointing. Very clever puzzles, with many emergent mechanics from just a few puzzle elements.
Hogtie
Instead of pushing boxes one by one when you are next to them, you can lasso many hogs at once and then move together, in line or parallel to each other, lengthening or shortening the ropes as needed. After the few introductory maze-like levels, more challenging mechanics are added: slippery ice, muddy puddles and clean water that only the hogs can go into, deadly acid swamps, and many others.
Inbox Unbox
Both this and Patrick's Parabox were inspired by the same game, but took the original concept in different directions. Boxes within boxes, infinite recursion, fractal mazes… While Patrick's Parabox focused on easier puzzles that showcase neat mechanics, Inbox Unbox opted for harder levels that challenge players from the start.
Kiko's Apple Adventure
It’s time to collect apples for the biggest apple pie! A Sokoban variant, you must push apples onto rafts, but while the apples follow the classic Sokoban rules, the rafts use a sliding mechanic. Add some sharks, tunnels, movable land and other fun mechanics, and you get a lovely game!
One More Button
The allowed moves are buttons in the level. Most of the time, they are also boxes you can push and rotate, so you may start a level with just right and down boxes, and you have to move those boxes around to turn one of them into an up button using the Reset button, which also acts like a box turning mechanism. What complicates things even more is that you have two different colors of buttons, each with its own undo and redo stack, so you must coordinate two different timelines.
Outpour
A 3D puzzle with water mechanics. Play as a gargoyle who has to rearrange the layout of the roof so that the only way out for the water is through the gargoyle’s mouth. The rope mechanic seems particularly interesting, I can’t wait to try it out.
Puzzle Depot
A well-themed open world puzzle adventure with a story, puzzles embedded in the world, upgrades, exploration, secrets and optimizations. You have to explore a factory with a very poor safety record, solving puzzles that involve boxes, barrels, annoying robots, toxic spills, lazy coworkers, huge bugs, explosives, and many other world objects.
Snow Cone
Prepare the perfect snow cone by rolling snowballs and scooping them up. Rolling a ball over unpacked snow makes it bigger, and you have a specific target to build, like 3 balls of size 1 on top of each other, or a 4-3-2-1 sequence, or any other sequence the puzzle may require. There are many other mechanics to discover, including movable boxes, slippery ice, and sinking water.
Snowmelt Manor
An open-world puzzler with a lot of snow mechanics. But the snow is just in the way, the real goal is to collect various objects and put them on display on pedestals. Although each individual level is good, the open world structure eventually leads to cross-world meta-puzzling and hard-to-reach secrets.
Sokobos 2
A sequel that is more focused: push vases into your big cart. There are rivers, and rocks, and buttons and gates, and you can push everything including the crate. Besides the clever puzzles, the game is also well themed, with a story and aesthetic inspired by ancient Greek myths.
Squid Grid
An underwater-themed puzzle game in which you play with squids, lobsters, seashells, pufferfish and other creatures, each with its own mechanics, in a game that is so much more than just a sokoban. Excellent mechanics, excellent levels, very good QoL, this is looking like one of the best games of the year.
Tome Tumble Tournament
Instead of pushing boxes, you push giant books, which may tumble, open and close, and contain powerful spells. But be careful not to get the pages wet!
Toroban
Sokoban is an infinitely repeating world, in which the way to move a box up may be to push it down instead. Solve infinite levels with infinite copies of you, in an infinitely modifiable world. This looks like a worthy mindbending successor to Patrick’s Parabox.
Treasure ‘n Trio
Solve increasingly difficult Sokoban levels with three very different characters: one can push boxes and kill enemies, one can walk through deadly spikes, and one can teleport people. Very interesting game idea, challenging levels, a story with characters and a large fantasy world full of treasure to collect.
Trifolium
Snake for those with Ophidiophobia? Yes please! You play as a giraffe with an incredibly long neck, navigating a 3D world. And I mean long, you will stretch across vast islands through many doorways, climbing over terrain and over your own neck.
Twist of Light
Box pushing with gravity, it takes the “turn the world” puzzle game to new heights by adding crystals that behave differently under gravity: green falls and may crush you, blue stays in place, red stays in place but is magnetic and keeps you and other crystals stuck to it. You can only move left or right and turn the world, no jumping, no climbing. Good puzzles, definitely something to try out and wishlist.
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