I've played a fair few Sokoban-likes since making an effort to play a wider variety of games. And I think in general... the subgenre isn't really for me? Don't get me wrong, there are some Sokobans I have really enjoyed and appreciated: the genius concept of Baba Is You and the organic simplicity and focus on player discovery in Stephen's Sausage Roll make these among some of the best made puzzle games I've played. But there always becomes a point in these games where frustration overtakes me... when the number of interacting mechanics becomes too great, or the convoluted solutions to the puzzles become too clever for their own good. When the artificial complexity begins to outpace the more organic complexity of one of these games' premises, I always find myself losing interest. Well... that didn't happen with Parabox. Patrick's Parabox starts off a little slow but before long it had grabbed onto me completely and, despite my checkered record on that front, I didn't find myself cheating on a puzzle even once. In terms of pacing, level design and player experience, I would now rate this to be the best Sokoban I've played.

The premise of Parabox is fantastic; the recursion theme is great and requires some really lateral thinking. The actual number of distinct rules the game introduces is surprisingly small, and most of the puzzles are less about applying them in an awkward way and more about exploring the way they interact and their natural corollories. It meant that every time I got stuck on a puzzle it was generally because there was an implication to one of the rules I hadn't worked out yet, and it meant each of these sticking points ended in a great 'a-ha!' moment when I finally managed to solve it. In terms of both the recursive theme and this focus on streamlined puzzles, Parabox reminds me a lot of Cocoon; but while Cocoon came off as being very handholdy and afraid of reaching it's full potential with its puzzles, Parabox is much more trusting of its player's intelligence, and really wrings out every ounce of puzzle potential from its core ruleset. In short, Parabox is pretty much exactly the game I wish Cocoon had been.

There's not much here to write home about in terms of aesthetics, though. I'm not really a huge fan of the music, the visuals are very simplistic and there is no attempt to really have any kind of theming or framework. At first this can make the game seem rather sparse, especially in the early levels where not a whole lot is going on. But once you enter the mid-game and the complexity really starts ramping up, this visual simplicity becomes much more of a blessing than a curse. In particular the use of simple shapes and bright block colours makes it remarkably clear what's going on no matter how crazy the play area gets; the game has the option for you to zoom into any box at any time to see what's happening inside, but the visual design was so clean that I almost never felt the need to.

So yes, all around, a very solid little puzzler. It's a very pure game; like I said, there's no real atmosphere or interesting visuals to speak of, but Parabox really goes all in on its puzzles and they are executed beautifully. Strong recommend from me on this one, even for people who are (like me) unsold on Sokobans in general.

I am not a fan of Sokoban puzzle games. I think too many in this subgenre rely on irritatingly specific solutions and end up being more about positioning yourself rather than working with a game's mechanics to understand a solution. Add in elements of spatial uncertainty and Patrick's Parabox sounds nightmarish by construction. But after checking out his previous game (Linelith, which I highly recommend), I needed to give this title a fair shake, and it is easily the best Sokoban game you can play right now.

Right off the bat, Patrick's Parabox doesn't restrict you as a player. You frequently have free reign to solve puzzles in whatever order you want, and you only need to solve the bare minimum of puzzles in one area to move onto the next. Even when I was hopelessly stuck, I never felt trapped since I had many other conundrums to work out instead. There are also options if needed to unlock all puzzles and solve as you wish, but I personally felt content with the pace of the game's natural process.

Patrick's Parabox maintains the Sokoban standards of pushing blocks into a desired position, but the main gimmick is that many boxes are collapsable on themselves or can create infinite loops, allowing you to bend space and push blocks and access corners you normally couldn't. I was consistently surprised at the depth some boxes could provide mechanically, and with over 300 puzzles, there are tons of extremely clever ideas that are gradually and intellectually expanded upon. An early idea teaches you that boxes will move into the center when pushed, and soon you will be exiting one looping paradox to use this center idea to shove a box into an impossible pathway. The simple presentation is always a misdirect from the complex, but never unfair thought process you must have to find a way to a correct solve. I was floored by how little a puzzle gave you to finish it and how much you could actually do with the tools you're handed, but I was equally stumped as often, finding myself toying with directions and boxes in any way I could.

Patrick's Parabox is a marvelous title. There is no story; this is a pure puzzler. And while some of the late and post game puzzles are borderline neuroticly difficult, I really enjoyed reaching the credits on PP and hope to play more innovative games from Patrick Traynor in the future.

I will say that I do actively recommend this to anyone who enjoys sokoban-esque puzzle games, I just have quite a few issues that make it very hard for me to rate it any higher. (I'm still going through beating levels; this just means that I've reached the "ending"). The biggest issue with this game is the fact that the pacing is horrendous, with so many levels that feel like I learned nothing from playing. So many of the main (white) levels were trivial, with the challenge (red and blue) levels feeling far more worth my time. Unlike Linelith, this game struggles to balance its scale with worthwhile content, because what's the point in having 350+ levels when 50% of them are a slog to go through. What edges it above other games that have a similar issue (The Talos Principle II for example), is that there still is quite a large volume of well-designed and intriguing levels. All the mechanics still do get their time to breathe and develop as mechanics before being introduced to anything else, with it building on each previous mechanic very well. For all the issues I have with the volume of levels, there is still quite a bit of really good content here that I think with a good bit of pruning that this game would be so much better.

Casualmente, después de pasarme Cocoon y escribir la review, me encuentro con Patrick's Parabox. Y veo que en todo lo que Cocoon me molesto, Patrick's lo soluciono; Diseño: entornos simples con mecánicas simples que se solapan para ser complejas (muy) y no entornos complejos (habiendo excentricidades de diseño sin aparente motivo) con mecánicas simples que se solapan para ser complejas, y el sentimiento que busque de estar un tiempo rompiéndome la cabeza pensado como hacerlo para después caer en la solución, se revela sin detenerse en cada nivel. Una proeza de diseño sin discusión; Narrativa: esto es videojuego, optas por no hacerlo y te centras en lo tuyo. Listo, no era mas.

Pero ahora. Si Cocoon se detenía en tratar de exprimir lo que creo cuando su narrativa terminaba, Patrick's Parabox nunca conoció ese limitante y siguió hasta agotarse de ideas. Dejándome a mitad de camino, sin fuerzas para poder seguirle el ritmo.

Puzzle games usually struggle to keep players engaged, it's not a genre for everyone to begin with, video games are usually played to turn your brain off
Patrick's parabox difficulty is catered towards more casual audiences from my experience with it. It doesn't ask you to break your head to understand it, more it wants you to see how many tricks it has up it's sleeves, One world you will be playing a rubrics cube and the other you will create a quadruple paradox.
The puzzles pull up new tricks on you and redefine your limits each world you pass, not mixing a lot of gimmicks between each world making itself fresh every new set of levels.
The presentation of the game is great too, as puzzle games tend to spare details in the sake of simplicity, yet it works kn favor of the smooth and sharp style the game has.
The game offers end game content with a big batch of challenges, but I wish there was a bit more, esp with the price tag being somewhat high for puzzle games

A puzzle game idea built on the most basic of video game puzzle frameworks - the block-pusher - and takes the idea to frankly destabilizing levels of ingenuity.

It's kind of nuts how quickly it ramps up, how fast it expects you to break your brain to follow its logic, and break anything and everything you knew about the block-pushing puzzles in the process.

Into world 3 it starts to become genuinely hard to engage with due to the sheer amount of processing power needed to do something as fucking simple as push a block in the right position. The execution isn't challenging, but the planning is some immaculacy; those tips given in world 2 only help so much.

...this sounds like I hate the game, but I really don't. I'm having a nice time with it! But I do feel it's a little uneven in how fast it scales and ramps up - though maybe, given its clever premise, there was no different difficulty curve that would've been possible.

Described by my partner as 'the game I hate where you're a box and you're inside a box and you're outside the box', this a great twist on the Sokoban formula.

Big fan of the critical path puzzles never really going too far in terms of difficulty, but with separate off-shoot challenge levels being available on each themed stage if you want to explore those ideas further. The post-game challenge levels can be a bit obtuse when mechanics are piled on top of each other but I guess that's where it makes sense for the puzzle design can go as wild as possible.

I would say this is the best puzzle game I've ever played, but for that I'd have to rule out Baba Is You, so #2 best puzzle game ever.

Patrick's Parabox is all about placing boxes inside boxes, sometimes infinitely, sometimes not. The concept is simple, yet the execution is PERFECT.

Every puzzle feels like it introduces something new, like it has something to show you and make you go like “woah, I could do that?”
10/10, I'm going back to my box now.

A fun and challenging Sokoban (box moving puzzle game) that uses reality-warping logic puzzles to create some fantastic challenges.

While the core mechanics take a little bit to get your head around, like moving boxes into boxes and then moving them in and out of themselves, everything naturally flows and there were only a few times I found myself getting stuck in paradoxical loops.

The ghost blocks were the only ones that really caused me confusion as you have to 'possess' other boxes and that can get very confusing when it interacts with the other mechanics, otherwise everything felt very cleanly implemented and resulted in some really challenging and exciting puzzles.

Highly creative, lots of fun, a smooth progression of mechanics that keep you playing, and they really go to lengths as they explore so many fun possibilities based on all the different ideas at play. A must have for any puzzler.