This game was honestly such an amazing concept! I loved this new take on a sokoban game. This game takes a traditional sokoban concept of moving blocks and adds a really great unique spin to it.
The game is basically sokoban but with words. The user starts with simple examples and those examples grow on each other eventually even making words into new things. But basically the area starts with letters jumbled and out of order. The goal of the game is to take these letters and make them into words. When you make the words a cool effect occurs and the words disappear.
The gameplay is super awesome. The user's goal is to create words with the letters given but it is honestly much more than that. The satisfaction the user gets when they complete the world is awesome. Whether it be just a noise or an explosion that lasts multiple frames. It makes the entire process super satisfying. The designer really put thought into how the player feels when playing the game. There is noise when you move as well making you feel more sucked into the game.
The blurbs in the beginning of each level really guide the gameplay. Although there aren’t specific instructions to the games the blurbs of text in between levels do help the user navigate controls in the game. These blurbs are just the user talking to the player but not even explicitly giving directions. You don’t even really know its a sokoban like game. This is all assumed. You learn early that the arrows allow you to move and the first word “HELLO” with just one letter out of place implies that you must move it into place. After your success the blurbs then say hi. And then say something welcoming you into the world. This “welcome to the world” quote allows you to then navigate the jumbled words on the screen to make these words. You then use the leftover letters to make other words. So even if the blurbs don’t give explicit directions they guide the user on what they are supposed to do through the game. This is really clever.
From how I have described the game it seems like there aren't any obstacles. There are definitely obstacles in this game. There are two main movement obstacles. The first is when you hit a wall. When you hit a wall on any of the sides there is no moving that block off that wall. Because it is a sokoban game, your movement is only allowed to push blocks. This gets frustrating and forces you to be strategic about your moves. Another sokoban obstacle is moving more than one block at once. You are not allowed to do this which gets very frustrating. So if you by accident have 4 blocks making a square you can’t move any of them because there will always be a box next to it. This is another hurdle you have to navigate when moving letters. You have to be careful what you move and where you move it to ensure you can move after.
Overall this game was super creative. I love the new take on the sokoban game. It was super fun navigating the game and playing it!