Sokobear Autumn Review | TheXboxHub

If You Can Bear One other Sokoban, This One is a Heat Cuddle

There was one thing satisfying about enjoying Sokobear Autumn throughout a summer season heatwave. I may daydream about cool October evenings as I pushed leafpiles round a sokoban area. I feel I used to be mentally making ready myself for a mid-year hibernation.

Sokobear is growing into one thing of a franchise on Xbox. We now have had Sokobear Cave, Sokobear Winter and now we now have Sokobear Autumn. Because the titles counsel, these are all sokoban video games the place you push and slide crates round a grid, aiming for a spot that represents the extent’s objective. In Cave the crates have been crystals, in Winter they have been logs, and in Autumn they’re leaf piles.

Get that Autumn feeling

Blitzing a Path Via the Blocks

As with the primary two video games, Sokobear Autumn’s hook is you could destroy a number of the partitions which might be scattered across the grid. You may press X subsequent to those sapling-looking obstacles and you’ll spin about, obliterating them. That clears the trail so that you can get behind your leafpile and shunt it by way of the place the sapling as soon as was. Equally, you may wish to depart the plant alone: it’s fully doable that it varieties a useful wall for reaching the outlet the place the leafpile ought to go.

Once more, like the opposite two video games, the variety of leafiles and leaf-holes will increase with the degrees. You may need two or three of every to take care of. There’s no rule about which leafpile goes wherein gap, so there’s a level of freedom about the way you strategy every degree. There are 40 ranges in complete, and you will want to complete roughly half of them if you need the total complement of 2000 Gamerscore.

Sokobear Autumn is just not an enormous departure from the remainder of the sequence. There’s an autumnal palette change, a special occupation for the bear to familiarize yourself with, and the sprites have all been modified to replicate the brand new theme. Having performed numerous Afil Video games’ extra progressive sliding-sokoban hybrids not too long ago, it’s a disgrace to search out that Sokobear Autumn is a side-step by way of innovation. There’s the block-destruction gimmick, however that’s been the identical for 3 video games now.

Sokobear Autumn level 11 — A sokoban that feels totally different

When in Doubt, go Greater

Sokobear Autumn makes up for it, to a level, by the way it handles the puzzle layouts. I obtained the sense that the designers had extra confidence than the earlier iterations. Ranges are extra sprawling, with a lot extra saplings to destroy. A few of the ranges really feel extra like Minesweeper ranges than sokoban, as you will have so many blocks to destroy and a higher freedom consequently about the place you’re taking your leaf-pile. This strategy makes an enormous quantity of sense, because it leans into what makes Sokobear Autumn distinctive in comparison with different sokoban: the flexibility to bear-spin and blow issues up.

As with the opposite Sokobear video games there’s additionally a double-edged sword in terms of the sport’s perspective. The sport display is definitely extra zoomed out than your common sokoban, and that enables for larger, longer-form puzzles. You may be pushing blocks round for an age earlier than getting them to the exit.

Nevertheless it additionally provides an inexact feeling to the pushing. I’m not 100% assured about the place a leafpile goes to go once I push it. There may be the odd second the place I’ll query whether or not the pile will hit a specific block. Some gridlines would have helped right here, however those self same gridlines would have broken the immersion and cute pixel artwork.

Sokobear Autumn level 14 — You would do worse than play this one

Standing Out From the Pack – Albeit Barely

There isn’t an enormous quantity of distance between Sokobear Autumn and the opposite sokoban video games, significantly from Afil Video games, on the Xbox Retailer. However there’s a sure je ne sais quoi about Sokobear Autumn that places it on a shelf above them. It’s within the mixture of block-destruction, bigger puzzles and cute narrative moments that one thing emerges. I’m additionally grateful to play one thing that doesn’t overuse the identical precise template, reusing every thing from the interfaces to the achievements.

If you happen to like sokoban, crate-pushing video games, then you would do so much worse than Sokobear Autumn. It’s not obtained an enormous quantity to supply by way of new experiences, nevertheless it’s obtained simply sufficient attraction and cleverness within the puzzles to get by. Plus you’ll be able to shut your eyes and picture it’s a cool Autumn night. That hit the spot for me.