Videos
Top Lists
Reviews:
-
Watch this review on YouTube
A challenging mix of chemistry and puzzles
Typically when you think of puzzle games they’ll tend to get put on the more casual side of things. Whether they’re hidden objects, box pushers, or even have some nonogram Picross-style action, puzzles like those can have their difficulty but they’re still a pretty carefree affair typically. Sokobond Express appears to be set on staking out a pretty different territory, having you work with puzzles based on chemical bonds and then needing to carefully navigate the board so you’ll reach the endpoint without then causing any collisions.Going this route tends to make the challenge two-fold, first conceptualizing the order and configuration of your bonded molecules, but then also preventing yourself from getting stuck somehow. The good news is that typically both of these answers tend to overlap each other, with your necessary path also being the one that will give you the proper bonds. The bad news is that if you’ve either never worked with chemical bonds, or all of that is a few decades in the rearview mirror you may be a bit under equipped for the challenge. Thankfully there is a hint which will show you the desired bonds and configuration, but very quickly even with that information in hand it won’t make finding the solutions terribly easy.Given the very specific nature of the puzzles, and the greater degree of difficulty than you’d normally see in this broad genre, there isn’t too much more to say about the game. It is purely a matter of whether you’re ready and willing to embrace its challenge or you’re not. I can’t say that in terms of implementation that I can fault it, if nothing else its general construction is quite simple so there’s not much to get wrong. If you’ve been looking for a very different kind of puzzler that will really challenge you to bring your A game this should do the trick, but if you’re not down to drive yourself a bit crazy with it you’ll want to stick to simpler fare.
Justin Nation, Score:Good [7.8]