Here is an introductory post on topic of logic puzzles. Feels like a pilot to series, but forgive me avoiding to establish such series yet, too soon to commit, heh.
Here, again, just as I love puzzles. Love to play them. Love to create them occassionally... only, that was never more than hobby, and here, and again, continued.
Without such interest I probably would never meet Sokoban, but yes, it is well known at that niche, not easy to skip.
As it is fairly simple by rules and gameplay, I already made a clone of it years ago... and also managed to lose it. Only because of that - I made it, again.
What is it about?
The game's premise is... you are in role of warehouse keeper, having task to set some boxes to designated target positions. Warehouse is bit crowded, have boxes, have wals. As box is heavy, you are able only to push it, not pull, and also as they are heavy, can't push more stacked boxes at once, just one by one. As a player, you command keeper from bird eye perspective, seeing map of warehouse with all walls, boxes, targets and your player avatar. So - how hard that can be?
How hard that can be?
It can be... Depends on how level is set, if you want to solve it, you'll see very soon that you're limited with moves which lead you toward final goal. Some moves just lead to deadlock, ah, just recognize such as soon as possible, and avoid them. So - deadlock - when level becomes unsolvable, like you set box to wall corner (and that is not target spot), or have two boxes next to each other and both next to wall, or four boxes in square formation, have more, OK, by time you are able to recognize deadlocks more and more - till then, by luck, there is unlimited undo.
... to set a level?
Uh, yes, to set a level is even harder. I have some intention to play with that, can't promise much success in advance, but will report if any :-) ... Because of that, I set original levels set I found at net, owned by Thinking Rabbit and published originally from 1982. and some of following years. Next to that, there is 'Our original levels' with so far just three intro levels, hope that in time this will grow bit more and also provide some fun. There are also levels which could be found over the net, with various origins and rights to be used, can't tell at this moment if any of them is to be included here.
As I told I want to create possibly good level or more, felt as initial drive to feel what is challenge with levels, what makes them to become interesting to solve - hope that would help with ideas on how to create. To have that feeling, I started to play these old levels... and, to spoil you bit in advance - they are not easy at all! It is real brain hurt - how to start, how to establish in which order to push boxes to targets??
Wanna try?
As Sokoban is a trademark, this one more new clone is provided with brand new identity (so should hopefully be hard to guess from where all that came from) - here: SOKO - See the Solution - as 'soko' means 'hawk' on some languages, and hawk is known for excellent vision, therefore tagline 'see the solution' and also player at game could be easier seen as an eye than some guy with mustaches, logically - if you trust me with all this, maybe I better head to advertisement career.
What is not told so far?
OK, if you only want to play, link is already above. If not just that, there are possibly some more spicy thingies to tell...
About development - It appears that human coding is to become just and hardly beleivable anecdote, as I am also so rare to look at code at all while agents this and agents that... With that in mind, I just told my initial intention on what I expect, provided text file with levels I found on net and agreed with proposal to deliver all as vanilla js client side only project. I used to work from Antigravity, despite it looks that their project is not in perfect shape... picked Gemini Flash as assistent and managed to deliver all without hit to quota limit.
It has more than initially expected - now with desktop view and mobile layouts both for vertical and landscape orientation and can be installed as an app. Fairly much on UI support - keyboard driven on desktop, swipes on mobile. Undo, reset, auto saved position, blah, that is maybe all.
Any fun?
Yeah. As I told, have some idea to make own levels. Tried that with assistance of ChatGPT, but... as you know that attitude 'I know all'... spent more hours to provide three intro levels with many tries and errors to follow simple rules as 'number of targets at least as number of boxes'. Even more fun when I confirmed 'let me try to mentally solve our puzzle'. Ah, no matter that I read on Sokoban Wikipedia page that levels are studied at field of artificial intelligence - like this companion skip that lesson. Told, in defence: So while chess is “complex with open information and an opponent,” Sokoban is “complex with combinatorial state space and path dependencies.” The difference is that chess has heuristics and training methods widely studied, whereas Sokoban solving requires either specialized solvers or careful mental planning.
So, when back to this topic, I am to look for some solvers which could check if some level is solvable, and possibly to pair that with generator.
Feedback is appreciated
I ask you to try game, even if it is known to you from before or not. Be welcomed to share your opinion, ask question, suggest this or that...
Also - Soko, on GitHub - repository is public, free to peek.
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