Review: Sokoban
Score:
77%
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If you are older than seven then you probably know Sokoban. And if you are reading this review you probably also know ZingMagic, famous for their numerous games for various Symbian platforms. They haven’t changed the basic concept in this port of the original box pushing game, your task is still to walk around in a closed room with your warehouse-man and push crates one at a time to their places.
When you start the game you find yourself looking at the list of levelpacks. At the beginning, the list consists of only one item (‘My first game’, with 202 levels) but the greatest feature of the game is that you can import any number of levelpacks (with a maximum size of 24x24 for individual levels) in ‘.xsb‘ format. You can easily find levelpacks on the web, ZingMagic has even provided a few links on their Sokoban web site.
After choosing the levelpack, you see the last level you have played in the state you have left it. This is the perfect solution for putting down and picking up your game at any point, especially for a mobile game where your gaming session can be interrupted by a phone call, text message or just real life at any time. Controls are simple and responsive, you just use the navigator to move and the erase button (C) if you want to undo any number of moves.
You might miss the ‘keep the button pressed for continuous movement in the same direction’, which would be more convenient and certainly less of a ‘keyboard killer’, as separate key presses for every step are very wearing, especially on bigger maps where you have to make several hundreds of steps to finish a level. Every other function (Next level, Jump to level, Restart level, Change skin, High scores and Statistics) can be accessed in the Options menu.
This version of Sokoban’s other outstanding feature is the High score list of the best 6 results and detailed Statistics for each and every level(!) separately. You can also set a Player name so you can play with your friends on the same phone and compare your results. After finishing a level you are given the choice of restarting the level you just finished or moving on to the next level in the current pack.
The visuals of the game are simple but about what you'd expect from a game like Sokoban. The sprites are automatically resized for every screen or screen mode so you see the same thing on whatever screen resolution your smartphone has. As in all of ZingMagic’s games, Sokoban uses only part of the phone’s full screen which makes it more suited for landscape modes but the unused space is not completely wasted – since version 3 of the game, the number of the current level is displayed in the heading.
You have the theoretical option to change skins in the game (they are called 'views' at the moment but don’t be confused, the only view is the 2D 'top down' one) though at the moment only one skin is working. Hopefully, the option to add your own skins will be added in the future – that would be a great boost for personalisation besides adding levelpacks.
Sokoban is a very simple game with a fairly limited number of possible extra features. There are certain areas where there is definitely some work needed (skins, levelpack information/statistics, keyboard shortcuts, an option to jump to previous/next unsolved level) but luckily the developer updates his games on a regular basis; Sokoban has already had 3 versions in its short life span, with less and less bugs and missing features in every release. In my opinion there isn't a long way to go for Zingmagic to release not just a decent port but an exceptional game. Even in its current form it's definitely recommended.
Attila Katona, AAS, 28 Feb 2007
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield, Attila Katona at