I have encountered the Sokoban puzzle plenty of times before, like Cubicban or Super Glow Puzzle. For those who aren’t aware, Sokoban puzzles are those block pushing puzzles you’ve seen around. Sokobalien is a farm animal pushing puzzle. You are big-headed alien and have to push cows and other farms animals like pigs and chickens into a ufo’s tractor beam. It’s pretty standard stuff you’ve seen a thousand times before, until you get to level 16, and they introduce disappearing floors controlled by buttons you have to leave cows on to materialize. Then the game becomes a lot harder and vastly more interesting. I could only get to level 22 before I was stumped, and the guide was completely wrong it is directions so i got stuck. I was disappointed really.
In the end, I just scratched the surface of Sokobalien though, there are 100 puzzles in total and lots I did not experience, but for what I did experience, this is one of the better Sokoban puzzle experiences I’ve found on the eShop. The reason being, they attempted to move the genre forward a little with the floors mechanic. In addition to the puzzles, there are different hats you can buy with the coins you get winning levels. You can change the background at will to one of five different color schemes. Pointless, but it is nice that it was added. Sokobalien will get a Recommended with an eight back-end score. Must Play? Not really, these games rarely are due to their ubiquity, but if you want a Sokoban puzzle game with a twist, check this out anyway.
Overall: Sokobalien is a Sokoban/block pushing puzzle game that dares move things forward, nice!
Verdict: Recommended
| Release Date | 4/18/24 |
| Cost | $4.99 |
| Publisher | Afil Games |
| ESRB Rating | E |
Game received for free from the publisher!
