Soko-ban Armageddon 7.25Mb
I’ll be posting a few games over the next week or two that are particularly good free examples of games of a usually well-known genre. Sokoban is originally a Japanese game that first appeared in 1982. It was created by Hiroyuki Imabayashi, and the initial 50 levels made the game famous and well-known, worldwide.
Today’s game is a graphically great 3D semi-isometric version of Sokoban, that isn’t listed elsewhere in the forum, (nor in Gargoyle’s synopsis; - which does have a few more Sokoban type games listed.) The game is straight Sokoban, not a variant with different rules. Sokoban is of course a game where you have to push objects into ‘home’ positions. If a block is pushed into a corner, it can’t be moved. If a block is pushed next to a wall, the block can only be pushed alongside the wall or into an open space at the end of a wall. Only one block can be moved at a time. Blocks can only be pushed, and not pulled, in a straight line.
Much of the skill is in getting the blocks into an arrangement where they can all be correctly located, without trapping yourself and not getting blocks ‘stuck’ in the process. Fixed obstacles are used to make things more difficult!
Soko-ban Armageddon
The game has 250 levels and a further 848 levels can be downloaded in the Christmas Set (1Mb) on the download page. It’s probably called Soko-ban Armageddon, ie ‘the last one’, as it’s considered to have some particularly difficult levels later on. There are a great range of puzzles in the default level set, of varying difficulty. However, even easy/level 1 may take quite a few attempts. Suffice that it can be solved! I sometimes find the smaller grids some of the most challenging! The grids range up to 20x17 in size. The blocks light up when one is placed on an indicated ‘home’ position in this version, though you often need to move one or more blocks from these lit positions to get another or other blocks home.
The most difficult levels may need 1000 pushes or more. ‘Simple’ levels may be solvable in a dozen moves or less! I find some versions of Sokoban remarkably easy.:- Soko-ban Armageddon is anything but easy mostly!
You can play at easy, medium (which includes the 50 original Sokoban levels), and difficult levels and there is also a time limit or move limit option. There’s also an option to skip levels if you get really stuck on any level! Levels completed are saved. ‘R’ key to restart a level, arrow keys to move.
The game has some great music in .ogg format, you can replace these with some of your own music should you wish. You can also turn off any sound effect you find annoying.
There’s a level editor included as part of the game itself, if you want to make your own levels. It's a Czech game for Windows with the default language set as English, plus a Czech language option.
Easy level 1 walkthrough for beginners! Here
Original levels walkthrough HERE
Download Soko-ban Armageddon HERE
Becher-ban 8Mb
There’s also a graphically different (same rules of gameplay) version called Becher-ban by the same author, which has a further 250 different levels, and is available on the download page.
Becherban
Download Becher-ban HERE
There are easier and very colorful variants available, together with more traditional Sokoban games HERE and many of these merit taking a look at. Some versions allow use of the spacebar to undo a move. The Pazoo variants 1 - 7 are especially colorful!
Sokoban Czech version 2 <1Mb
You might like another Czech version with neat graphics, over 3000 levels, states best solution in number of moves/pushes and has an undo option, and mouse menus. It loads in English and has an English help file. You need to cycle through the skins to set the one illustrated. It also has a level editor to create or adapt levels and you can choose any of the levels to try and solve. It also has a replay stoppable one step at a time show you video solution for over 2000 levels, so you can watch all or part of the solution play itself through! Brilliant!
Sokoban Czech version 2 Level 1
Download Sokoban Czech version 2 HERE