Puzzle Depot

[quote]A review copy was provided by the developer.[/quote] [quote]Follow my Curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41363546-Fruit-N-Doggie-Reviews/]Fruit N Doggie Reviews,[/url] so you can be updated whenever I post a new review.[/quote] [h1]Overall Rating - High Quality ★★★★☆[/h1] [h1]First Impressions[/h1] Having tried numerous games over the years, I've seen my fair share of sokoban or block-pushing puzzles, and often don't relish them that much. Everybody has their own preferences, but part of it stems from how similar the mechanics tend to be from one version to the next. They're almost always a one-screen offering, and can be real brain-stumpers, where I just can't get any clue on how to solve the set-up. I was slightly off the mark with how Puzzle Depot (PD) works in practice, yet it offers much more than many other titles using this puzzle style. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] Each level in this title is made up of several screens, the vast majority of which have some version of a block-pushing puzzle to solve. However, with every location building the story, you'll find notes and scraps of paper revealing more information about the surroundings, events, or issues the inhabitants were encountering. This ties in to the equipment and state of things around you, as some items are only for the sake of earning extra points, others are used to activate devices that change how the level plays, while the rest are equipment that helps you deal with puzzles. Another interesting element is that aside from some situations where you're forced to proceed linearly, you can explore and go in your own order. Sometimes, you'll find a path where nothing comes easily, but in other situations, you might find a useful tool earlier on, which changes how you approach puzzles. I don't believe there's any set-up where you'll quickly find an item that trivializes a level, but this still makes for an engaging system. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3617314390 [h1]Controls[/h1] There's a few unorthodox moves in this title, such as selecting and using items from your inventory, but it was sensible and worked well. Plus, you can freely undo any moves you've made, or restart the entire room as needed, which should be universal in games like this. Something to be aware of for those who'd attempt the auditor runs, even if you're pointlessly kicking an unbreakable object, the moves counter will continue to increase. [h1]Story[/h1] Without spoiling too much, you start off from the perspective of two characters who wind up unified through a common issue. Science went astray for them, and they're flung into a less than ideal future, one less willingly than the other. Over time though, you'll start taking on other perspectives, which in some cases have minor differences in what the character is capable of. I thought the game did a good job of conveying the story to players, without ever having too long of a plot dump. It distributes chunks of information in bits and pieces, allowing you to progress and play without having to read for too long at once. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3617313829 [h1]Visuals[/h1] Industrial themes aren't too uncommon for this puzzle style, but more often than not, the design doesn't go much beyond making the blocks look heavy duty, with simple backgrounds. Because of the game's focus on the puzzle aspect, you don't explore open-ended landscapes, but it feels much more like you're searching around actual locations. The immersion is greater due to a sense that you're navigating abandoned buildings, desolate landscapes, and merely trying to survive with the meager items around you. You're not just arbitrarily following rigid rules about how you can move blocks in a warehouse, needing to line up all the blue squares onto the blue spaces in order to advance. [h1]Sound Design[/h1] Originally, I thought the song for any stage was predetermined, but I realized that it changes based on the environment. It can be a little jarring having the music shift as you transition from an industrial site to a cave-dwelling area, but it does fit the atmosphere better. I also think there could have been a few more tunes to better distinguish between the different moods certain locations would inspire compared to others. Including more songs that played upon the creepy, unknown vibe wouldn't have hurt players better distinguish one site from another. Regardless, the music does a good job of setting the atmosphere, fitting well with the game's overall presentation. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3617315520 [h1]Pros[/h1] 🌟 Despite consisting of sokoban puzzles, it doesn't feel like you're playing a standard game of that style. This title feels more rewarding than that. 🌟 It's fun exploring a new level, solving puzzles as you start to better understand the logic of the developers. 🌟 If you like complex puzzles, the optional objectives will interest you. [h1]Cons[/h1] ❌ The increasing complexity of levels and the steps you need to take to unlock all the optional content shuts out most players from getting that far. This is despite the entire game having a video guide showing how to clear every puzzle, and obtain every secret. ❌ I've come across one or two situations where the auto-save system can soft-lock you. By and large it's convenient and helpful, but you'll want to make a few manual saves during every level. ❌ Figuring out your objective in each puzzle isn't always immediately obvious. In a few cases, breaking a box might reveal an item you need to beat that room. [h1]Tips[/h1] 🔍 When first playing a level, I'd explore and solve puzzles without taking damage. Very few of them can't be solved without a forced hit. Otherwise though, I'd save the optional content for follow-up attempts. 🔍 Because the game doesn't have many indicators on the map, this is one where you'd want to take notes while playing. Remembering where resources are would be difficult without them. [h1]Final Thoughts[/h1] My main complaint with PD pertains to the Auditor objective. With such an emphasis on story, as well as secrets and exploration, it feels as if this was included because it's such a staple of sokoban puzzles, not whether it really fit into the bigger picture. Unless you replayed and loaded saves numerous times during a first attempt, it's going to take a couple of tries to earn the other achievements, which feel like additional challenges well suited for the game. At that point though, since they often require additional actions that work counter to taking the minimum number of steps, that's another time you'd have to beat the level if you want to stay on top of all the secrets. Plus, you have to traverse numerous screens, so it's really easy to make a few minor missteps and prevent yourself from accomplishing this goal, having nothing to show for the attempt. Otherwise, I found this to be an engaging puzzle game, and really enjoyed the story. Its difficulty and complexity should be considered before purchase though, as the puzzles get fairly elaborate. You should be this big brain before buying this game. [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]Follow our curator page: [b]IndieGems[/b] if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.[/url][/quote] [table] [tr] [th]PC Specs[/th] [th]Performance[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Ryzen 2700 RTX 2070 16GB RAM ADATA SSD 1920x1080 [/td] [td]The game ran without incident on default settings. 💖 - PD is healthy [/td] [/tr] [/table]

The last sokoban game I played was Isles of Sea and Sky, so I'll be comparing this game to IoSaS a lot. The starkest difference between Puzzle Depot and IoSaS (and most other sokoban games) is the amount of plot story going on. There's a bunch of characters with a bunch of dialogue and the like -- it's an entire thing. All of it is appropriately light-hearted and it never takes itself too seriously. And while plots and stories aren't exactly what I'm looking for in my puzzle game experiences, I can tell that a great deal of effort has been put into this aspect of the game. The game's presentation is an advantage over IoSaS, and IoSaS wasn't at all shabby in that regard either. When it comes to playing the sokobongo proper, for most of the game, the individual puzzles themselves are pretty easy compared to the fanciful things you can find in IoSaS, but they do eventually get to a very satisfying level of difficulty. And there's more of them, too. And they have more varied and fun interactions and mechanics, too! But the real meat of the game lies in the fact that the puzzles are not self-contained. You've got consumable resources to manage, alternative solutions and secrets to find, shortcuts to discover, pathings to plan. Puzzle Depot lets you explore one traditional part of sokoban games that IoSaS did not touch upon at all: optimization challenges. You can go for things like minimizing your step count, not taking any damage in a level, finding all the collectables, keeping all of your equipment, or getting a specific number of kills on specific enemies. Since the puzzles aren't self-contained, it becomes more about solving the big picture than about solving the individual puzzles. The step count challenge is the big one, and it’s not just about minimizing the steps of your solutions -- it’s often also about finding some crucial but easily missable shortcut. This might seem daunting at first, and it is! [spoiler]But something not immediately apparent might make it a bit easier.[/spoiler] The challenges can be quite tricky, but also very satisfying to get. You should be prepared for a lot of repetitiveness that comes with trying to find the optimal pathing for whatever challenge you’re going for. And the challenges are often mutually exclusive, so us completionists will be solving the same puzzles over and over and over again. This will become pretty tedious, and I wish there was some way to skip some of the stuff that doesn’t affect the step count, like the boss fights. If you do go for the optimization challenges, you’ll encounter some frustrations. The main one is that you can’t undo past a screen transition -- and you’re gonna want to, a lot. The game unhelpfully autosaves to a single autosave slot after each transition, so you’ll need to save manually. Often. You’re gonna have a rough time if you’re the kind of person who relies on autosaves in video games. Be warned that the game has a real-time element that one might not expect in a sokoban video game. Most often it’s just about quickly stepping off a crumbling floor after stepping on it, but there are exceptions. There will be times when you are required to press a series of correct inputs in quick succession. The real-time element allows for some interesting puzzle designs, and yet, I still feel like it’s out of place. But I guess if action games get to have some puzzle elements in them, puzzle games are allowed to have some action elements too?? The boss fights are the worst offenders. While not particularly difficult, they’re still very annoying, because you can’t undo in them -- and if you try to, you’ll restart the entire fight. You will absolutely try to undo during a boss fight just out of habit, so this is not very well designed. Consider temporarily disabling your undo in the options. There’s also an option to make the boss fight easier, which marginally slows down the speed of the projectiles, but it took me a few fights to even notice the difference. Also the game uses “alternate” to mean “alternative” in the controls rebind menu screen. Figuratively unplayable Version played: 1.0.0

A stunning achievement. Was recommended this on a whim by a friend who knows I like puzzle games and watches a lot of streamers. Absolutely blown away. This is a perfection of form of the micro-vs-macro form of puzzle solving. Beating the game is one thing. Unraveling how to do the various challenges elevates this game into a truly wonderous puzzle experience. I've been voraciously consuming this genre for a long time and this is one of the very best.

There's a lot of content for this sokoban game. The puzzles are rewarding, and you're bound to keep trying to optimize solutions to get the optional challenges, which, for me, are not really optional if you want to enjoy a game like this. That being said, the Auditor challenge, which is optimizing move count, is much more frustrating than the other challenges, so that one might be left untouched... unless you're into that. The game has a lot of different mechanics which interact with each other quite well, which keeps things fresh for quite a while. Many puzzles have multiple ways to solve them, and you often get items that help you solve puzzles that you may be having issue with, which can help you "cheese" them at the cost of not being able to do some of the optional challenges, which does mean that more casual puzzle gamers should still be able to at least complete the level. A large part of the fun of the optional challenges is figuring out how to get through the rooms or pick up certain objectives without, say, losing health or using/damaging one of your items. My biggest complaint, which is minor and did not affect my enjoyment all that much, is the undo system. While I'm glad that one exists in the first place, it's limited in frustrating ways. While I understand that its implementation is limited in part by real-time mechanics that exist in this game, it's still annoying to not be able to undo more than a certain number of moves, or undo into other rooms. In practice, this means you'll be relying on saves quite a lot to "undo", which is not ideal. The fact that the auto-save only saves to the start of the room is kind of annoying, too. Why not have multiple auto-saves reaching, say, 10 rooms back? But again, this just means that you'll be manually saving and loading a lot, which is only marginally more bothersome than actually undoing. Sure, you'll have to solve some puzzles again, but you just solved them anyways and should remember how to do it again. I guess if you forgot to save in a long time, you'll be irked greatly, but you should only have to learn that lesson once. I think this game is really up there for sokobans, and is a must-try for puzzle gamers.

This is a very intricate and interesting take on the soukoban like game genre with some really fun twists. The animations and pixel art are very charming and really helps punctuate the humour. There's a lot to dig into here outside of the direct puzzle pushing solutions. Intriguing story and a clear project of passion by these developers.

最初に：このゲームには虫が出てきます すげー時間かかったし最終的にYoutubeでガイドを見たけどとりあえず真エンディングまでたぶんクリア。 めちゃくちゃ面白いです。 パズルとして面白いのは当然のこと、ちゃんと探索までしないと各ステージの隠し目標までたどり着けなくて、 しかも隠しエリアにたどり着いたらなんと新しいパズルが出てくる！ 難易度的にも、アイテムや体力のおかげでクリアするだけなら多少無理矢理にでもクリアできるんだけど、ちゃんとやろうと思うとアイテム管理をかなりしっかりやらないといけないのが楽しい。 正直ストーリーそれ自体は定番感が強く、悪くないけどめちゃくちゃよかったというほどでもないかな？という程度だけど、 隠し目標にたどり着いたときの新発見と、カットシーンの演出もあり通常クリアと全く印象が変わります。 クリア後に解放されるステージもバカむずいのでまだしばらく楽しめそう。 今のところ今年買ったゲームで一番面白いっすな。 ----以下少しプレイした時の感想---- これはヤバイゲームを見つけてしまったかもしれん。 ピュアパズラー寄りのタイトルが目立つ倉庫番ジャンルにおいて、体力やアイテムなどいわゆるゲームっぽい要素を取り入れていて、ゲーム部分のギミックがちゃんとパズルに活きている。ストーリーも気になる。 現時点でまだ2面しかクリアしてないけど、ストーリーありのゲームでパズルの難易度が高すぎると詰まってしまうのでノーマルクリアする分には解ける難易度を維持しつつ、やりこみの別解をちゃんと用意しているニオイを感じる……！ちゃんと探索もしないとサブ目標クリアできないっぽい？ できればせめてパズル解いた分だけでもマップを詳細に見せてほしいが、おれが英語わからんだけでもしかしたらちゃんと見れるのかもしれない。

This game isn't getting the attention it deserves yet. If you like puzzle games, you should check out the demo. I enjoy that the puzzles in a level aren't completely separate, so you can smuggle out items from one puzzle to clear another in a different way. Working on trying to find the optimal solutions and get the various in-game achievements in each level.

In the ranks of indie box pushing games, this is a very very good one. It works in a wide variety of mechanics - different shaped boxes, barrels, rust, toxic goo, robots, giant bugs, and more, but manages to make it feel fairly cohesive. The puzzles hit the sweet spot where you have a very limited number of moves, yet you're constantly racking your brain as to the exact sequence to get things right. The difficulty curve is excellent as well, where it seems simple at first but gradually ratchets up, testing every bit of knowledge you've acquired. The main unique factor of this game is that it contains resources, in the form of items, equipment, and health, and this means that many puzzles have alternate solutions. There often isn't a 'perfect' solution that gets you through with all resources intact, so you have to pick and choose what you want to do. There are multiple optional objectives, and every level has a secret, but you can't do every optional thing at once, which adds replayability, going back to levels to figure out different paths to achieve specific goals. It'd be most comparable to A Monster's Expedition or The Electrifying Incident in that regard - you have one solution path which is fairly reasonable, but there are alternate strategies you have to work really, really hard to achieve. I did a default run through the game, not bothering with hunting for secrets, and it still took me quite a lot of time, you definitely get your money's worth here in terms of puzzling content. The story itself is mostly perfunctory, some lightly humorous touches but nothing too memorable, apart from one very good joke. However, the setting helps to tie the mechanics together in a way that feels cohesive. One minor quibble would be that the real-time elements don't really work for me, they usually come down to simple reflex checks but you have an undo button so it never feels like they have much of a point. They're designed in a way where they wouldn't work if it was purely synchronous movement, though, so not much to be done. Ultimately only a small irritation in what is otherwise a fantastic game, nothing dealbreaking. Not much needs to be said, if you're a fan of sokoban-style games at all, you need to play this.

very fun sokoban-like, with bits of drod and even drod rpg included. optimization (for the sickos) and managing resources add more flavor than typical in the genre. super easy recommend for the box pushers, def deserves more love before jonathan blow's boxer takes the spotlight

A puzzle game with metal gear level of freedom of choice? Amazing concept, great game, deserves much more attention.