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Comment by rjh29 | Hacker News Reader

All of the critically acclaimed puzzle games seem to be sokobans. I have no idea why sokoban is so popular; I find it very tedious to move blocks around manually, especially if I already know the solution and I'm just making it happen. For me games like Artisan of Glimmith, LOK Digital, Tiling Town and Lingo are the most fun, followed by deductive games like The Roottrees Are Dead and The Case of the Golden Idol.

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>All of the critically acclaimed puzzle games seem to be sokobans

Wouldn't really agree considering:

Antichamber, The Witness, Talos Principle, Manifold Garden, Portal, Zachtronics, Tunic, Blue Prince, Return of the Obra Dinn, Seance of Blake Manor, a bunch more I could list.

Tunic is such an incredible experience. If you ever enjoyed the original Zelda and its manual, you simply must play tunic. It captures something incredible. And it has some amazing twists.

But it's hardly what I would consider a puzzle game.

You could consider it a jigsaw puzzle game.

I'd say it's either an action-adventure game with some mystery, or a mystery game with some action-adventure, depending on the player.

TV has the “puzzle box” genre and this is a much better fit for what Tunic is

Exactly, I am quite surprised by this thread. I always thought sokobans were just one of the niches of puzzle games (one that I am not quite a fan of, to be honest... I find it just okay.)

A good sokoban should not be busy-work. Well designed puzzles should be pithy and not require a lot of running around. The distance between discovering the solution and executing it should be very short.

This one is critically acclaimed and is not a sokoban: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2721890/oo/

That must be a specific niche. I enjoy puzzle games and the only sokoban game I can think of is Baba Is You. Though many games, including games that are not primarily puzzle games have a sokoban-like puzzle at some point.

The puzzle game that reaped all the rewards this year is Blue Prince, it has its sokoban moment, but as a whole it is definitely not a sokoban game.

Stephen's Sausage Roll, Can of Wormholes, Patrick's Parabox, A Monster's Expedition (and spin-offs), Baba is You, Void Stranger, Isles of Sea and Sky, Maxwell's Puzzling Demon. All of these are highly reknowned.

By "critically acclaimed games" I should clarify I mean games acclaimed for their mechanics and general mind blowingness. For whatever reason sokoban enables some crazy logic stuff that is harder to find in other puzzle games.

> I find it very tedious to move blocks around manually, especially if I already know the solution and I'm just making it happen

thinking about how calvin's dad would explain every video game is either sokoban, or chess

The Artisan of Glimmith is so good! Biggest surprise of the year for me so far.

Absolutely! Really good value too, thousands of puzzles.

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