Pull Chain

Pull Chain is a free sokoban puzzle game about a lizard dragging a light source. The light occupies its own tile and follows a particular logic of movement patterns that leads to maneuvering problems. The mechanics are intuitive and the setups often involve few elements, but these ingredients combine just right to make every puzzle feel impossible.

The main challenge of the game comes from manipulating the light source, which you don’t control directly. You only control the lizard that is bound to the light source. Because of the chain between them, the light always occupies one of the tiles directly around the lizard: either a tile that’s to one side of the lizard, or one that’s in the adjacent corners. When moving the lizard, the light usually gets dragged to the tile that the lizard just left. As such, even though the lizard has standard, orthogonal grid-based movement, the light can be made to move from one tile to an adjacent corner tile — a diagonal move.

This unusual feature is thoroughly explored right from the first levels of the game, where it is combined with moths that dash toward the light when it enters their line of sight. (The moths can also be pushed by the lizard in standard sokoban fashion.) Some levels require to attract the moths and bring them to floor buttons that open the way to the exit, while other levels make it equally important to not trigger the moths and have them stay in place instead. You’ll have to manipulate the light just right and use diagonal shifts, obstacles, and the lizard itself, to block out or dodge the relevant lines of sight.

The game is split between multiple areas that progressively introduce new puzzle elements, like snow blocks that can be pushed onto floor buttons but melt when the light gets next to them. Two mechanical twists in particular add a lot of complexity to the game: being able to turn the light on and off, like a lamp with a pull chain switch and dealing with platforms that lead to items occupying either one of two distinct height levels. You don’t have to clear every level in an area to unlock the next one, but meeting the minimum number of level clears is already quite tough.

There's a conceptual line that can be drawn through some of Steven Miller’s games leading to Pull Chain. Shackle introduced the idea of dragging objects and developed rich interactions from it, then the Halloween sequel Shack-o’-Lantern turned the burdens into light sources, and now in Pull Chain the light must be used to lure moths towards you, melt snow and more.

This description was written by Oriane Tury and Corey Hardt.