Sokocat – Islands | Game Info, Prices, Platforms and Reviews

A great sokoban game that can give a really good challenge in the later levels. The "Islands" in this game refers to the micro scale puzzles that are separated by level height and distance, requiring strategic use of platforms and rafts to traverse. This is quite a clever setup, as (in my opinion) the best sokoban puzzles are those in tight, restricted environments, giving the player enough logical space to reverse engineer the solution from the ending positions.
A minor annoyance with this game is the inability to recall the last couple of moves. Because of the physics of this game, blocks can be pushed off the island to drop them to a lower level. Often, this is used to great effect by considering where is the best place to drop a block to accomplish the goals of the puzzle on a different level. The problem, however, is that sometimes you can accidentally push the block off when you don't intend to, or even push it off the puzzle map altogether and into the water, forcing a complete restart of the stage. At this point, the multi-puzzle nature of each stage works against itself, as you now have to redo all the previously accomplished puzzles in the same stage to get back to where you left off.
Accidentally pushing blocks into the wrong place or off into the water can occur regularly due to the rotating camera. Oftentimes you will need to pan around the puzzle to see the different levels and trigger points. At diagonal viewpoints though, the control gets a bit iffy, and "forward" is no longer necessarily the same button (All this could have been solved by using the number pad keys, allowing 8 directions of movement that would have made it very clear what direction you were moving).
There's also the odd bit where the game causes my laptop to really heat up. I'm not sure what computations the game is running, but it really should not be heating up as much as a graphics heavy FPS or RTS game.
All that said, Sokocat Islands has some great puzzles inside, and I've enjoyed my time playing them. Highly recommended!

Steam User 0

Reviewed 11.2023

A great sokoban game that can give a really good challenge in the later levels. The "Islands" in this game refers to the micro scale puzzles that are separated by level height and distance, requiring strategic use of platforms and rafts to traverse. This is quite a clever setup, as (in my opinion) the best sokoban puzzles are those in tight, restricted environments, giving the player enough logical space to reverse engineer the solution from the ending positions.
A minor annoyance with this game is the inability to recall the last couple of moves. Because of the physics of this game, blocks can be pushed off the island to drop them to a lower level. Often, this is used to great effect by considering where is the best place to drop a block to accomplish the goals of the puzzle on a different level. The problem, however, is that sometimes you can accidentally push the block off when you don't intend to, or even push it off the puzzle map altogether and into the water, forcing a complete restart of the stage. At this point, the multi-puzzle nature of each stage works against itself, as you now have to redo all the previously accomplished puzzles in the same stage to get back to where you left off.
Accidentally pushing blocks into the wrong place or off into the water can occur regularly due to the rotating camera. Oftentimes you will need to pan around the puzzle to see the different levels and trigger points. At diagonal viewpoints though, the control gets a bit iffy, and "forward" is no longer necessarily the same button (All this could have been solved by using the number pad keys, allowing 8 directions of movement that would have made it very clear what direction you were moving).
There's also the odd bit where the game causes my laptop to really heat up. I'm not sure what computations the game is running, but it really should not be heating up as much as a graphics heavy FPS or RTS game.
All that said, Sokocat Islands has some great puzzles inside, and I've enjoyed my time playing them. Highly recommended!

Sokocat – Islands

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Steam User 0