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9 reviews · 2 essays
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Legible Failure — Making the Dead End Readable in Puzzles
In puzzles, failure is not death but the dead end. From Sokoban's irreversible push to Stephen's Sausage Roll's invisible stalls and the soft-lock-free design of The Witness and COCOON, I examine the design question of whether failure can be read, not whether it should be punished.
The Ethics of Undo — Forgiveness or Punishment
One button reshapes the entire experience. Sokoban's restart, Braid's rewind, Baba Is You's unlimited Undo. A look at the dividing line between designs that forgive trials and designs that punish them.
Related reviews
Jelly Is Sticky
A grid-based sokoban where you push, stick and deform blocks of jelly — each color carrying its own stickiness, rigidity and deformability — across 300-plus handmade puzzles. A Lunarch Studios game that grows deep contraptions from a small toolkit.
puzzlesokoban-likePipe Push Paradise
A 3D sokoban about restoring plumbing on a lonely island: push pipes across a grid and, by their shape, they roll and stand upright to route the water. One verb — push — yet pipe shapes and gravity open a solution space with no visible floor. By Corey Martin and Teo Zamudio.
puzzlesokoban-likeLOK Digital
A word-search puzzle in the invented language 'LOK': spell its words on a grid, blacken the filled cells, and expand the world of tiny creatures. Each word carries its own effect and reshapes the grid's adjacencies as you spend it. Adapted from a physical puzzle book by Letibus Design and Icedrop Games, published by Draknek & Friends.
puzzlelogicword-gameCan of Wormholes
A grid-based sokoban where you steer a worm that crawls Snake-style-head forward, tail shrinking-to fill target holes with a body of the exact right shape and length. A handful of verbs (push, grow, slice) hide layers of interactions that fire only under precise conditions. By munted finger.
puzzlesokoban-likeSnakebird Primer
A calm, grid-based movement puzzle where a fruit-eating snakebird uses gravity and its own lengthening body to reach the exit. With blocks, portals, spikes and unlimited undo, Noumenon Games' primer hands over the original Snakebird's brutal grammar one gentle step at a time.
puzzlesokoban-likeA Good Snowman Is Hard To Build
A Sokoban-like puzzle where you roll snowballs that grow on fresh snow, then stack them large-to-small to build a snowman. The only verb is push. A small, exacting work from Alan Hazelden, co-creator of Sokobond, hiding a second game inside its garden.
puzzlesokoban-likeThe Bridge
A 2D puzzle game where you rotate the entire stage to change which way gravity pulls, threading M.C. Escher-style impossible architecture to reach the exit key. From a single verb — turn the world — grow vortexes, a rolling boulder and full inversion, all in hand-inked black-and-white lithograph. A 2013 game by Ty Taylor and Mario Castañeda.
puzzlepuzzle-platformerphysicsRecursed
A 2D puzzle that translates recursion into a tiny pixel-art room. The grandfather of Patrick's Parabox.
puzzleplatformerrecursiveBonfire Peaks
A Sokoban about closure — carry your belongings to the bonfire and let them burn.
puzzlesokoban-like
