The Court of Wanderers

Wander an impossible space to find block-rotating puzzles behind every door.

Buy from:

Steam

The Court Of Wanderers is a grid-based sokoban game in which you rotate your environment to solve puzzles. This rotation mechanic is combined with classic block-pushing to craft challenging puzzles set in a semi-open world. The Court Of Wanderers boasts a very clever level design on par with the latest sokoban landmarks (Stephen’s Sausage Roll, Bonfire Peaks...) that will please anyone looking for a similar experience.

The game opens up with a few intro puzzles showcasing its core mechanic. The puzzles contain floor pads that, when stepped upon, will rotate any object in their radius (even the walls). They have arrows indicating the amount of rotation: a pad with two arrows will rotate 180° while pads with one or three arrows will rotate 90° clockwise or counter-clockwise. The game can be pretty confusing especially at the beginning, as several different overlapping pads lead to tricky situations.

The Court Of Wanderers also doesn't waste time. Once you’re past the initial puzzles, there is no filler to be found whatsoever. Though the game has a balanced difficulty curve, it quickly gets serious and introduces its remaining mechanics right in the first couple of areas: movable objects and rising platforms. The movable objects come in two different forms, one that you can push wherever you want as long as there is enough space, and one that can only be pushed either horizontally or vertically depending on its state, that you can change through rotation.

Similar to its sokoban inspirations, The Court Of Wanderers plays a lot with height. Movable objects need to be cleverly manipulated to create bridges, and floating platforms add an additional layer of complexity. The visual design is rather rudimentary, so you may occasionally fumble when trying to identify the position or the direction of certain objects. Despite the mechanics being scarce, the game thoroughly exploits them to the fullest across nearly sixty levels, leading to plenty of eureka moments.

This description was written by Andréas Andrieux.