Patrick's Parabox

Patrick’s Parabox is a block-pushing puzzle game set in an abstract world with recursive interactions. Some of the boxes are hollowed out, meaning that boxes can be pushed inside or outside of each other—and sometimes of themselves. This leads to mind-bending situations, and a fair collection of entertaining brainteasers.

Patrick’s Parabox rests on the familiar sokoban formula of pushing boxes onto targets to complete levels. However, it introduces a significant twist to this structure, as some boxes have openings which allow other boxes to be pushed inside, shrinking to fit. The player character is also shaped like a box, so they can move between boxes in the same way. Soon enough, puzzles are introduced where the level itself is duplicated as an actionable box, such that you can leave the bounds of the level only to re-enter it from that box…

Having nested levels opens the door to all kinds of recursive paradoxes. What happens when you try to push a box outside of itself? The game lets you get mischievous with its system, and some of the unexpected corner cases even get central to the late puzzles. In parallel, a few hand-picked mechanics expanding on the recursive gameplay are regularly introduced, such as mirror boxes, or boxes with no borders at all.

Although the recursiveness of the puzzles may appear intimidating, they’re often surprisingly intuitive. The game has a gentle learning curve, and it allows you to get to the end through a rather forgiving route, without having to clear its most difficult levels. The world is actually split into consecutive areas, easing you into understanding one new mechanic at a time. You can either clear a number of puzzles and move on to the next area, or choose to spend more time inside the red-bordered, harder auxiliary levels.

Patrick’s Parabox is essentially a pure puzzler: the levels flow into each other, there’s no story of any kind, and the art is pleasant but mostly functional. Note that, in addition to the main game content, computer versions of Patrick’s Parabox can access fan-made levels. There’s no in-game level editor, but the developer shared tools and instructions on the game’s website.

This description was written by Asher Stone and edited by Oriane Tury.