Patrick’s Parabox

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Draknek & Friends Puzzle Bundle (6 Games) (no longer available), along with Sokobond, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, Cosmic Express, A Monster’s Expedition, and Bonfire Peaks. It is also included in Draknek and Friends Puzzle Bundle (2024), which contains all of the games named above plus Sokobond Express.)

Patrick’s Parabox is a family-friendly Sokoban-style Puzzle game released in 2022 on PC and ported to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch in 2023. Sokoban-style box-pushing Puzzle games seem to be a recurring theme for developer Draknek, with prior games A Monster’s Expedition, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, and Sokobond all offering a unique spin on this old subgenre. Most recently, A Monster’s Expedition added a lovely presentation with an amusing framing device of a human museum run by monsters. Meanwhile, Patrick’s Parabox goes a different direction with the formula, scaling back the presentation to be extraordinarily simple, while placing all of its focus on its one excellent game mechanic and absolutely phenomenal level design.

The game mechanic in question is recursion. Levels in Patrick’s Parabox take place within a single-screen square, where players must push boxes to designated locations and then reach an exit square. However, the twist here is that the boxes themselves can contain their own Sokoban-style puzzles, with players able to hop in and out of these boxes to pass through them, to store boxes for use later, and even to push in boxes to get them to designated locations within the box. What’s more, levels can contain themselves as a box, making for some truly delightful reality-bending puzzles.

These mechanics are put to extremely good use in Patrick’s Parabox, with many levels forcing players to think of new ways to use the tools at their disposal. The controls are never more complex than simply moving up, down, left, or right, and yet the reality-warping nature of the game really makes for some extraordinarily clever level design.

Of course, earlier I mentioned the sparse presentation, and in that area there’s not much to talk about. Players move a square with eyes on flat-colored untextured levels, and while they are bordered with a nice little digital effect, there’s really not much to talk about here visually. Likewise, the game’s relaxed synthesized soundtrack isn’t anything especially memorable, though as with the simple visuals it too works well for this style of gameplay. At the very least I can say that the sound is pretty nice here in subtle ways – your character’s movements sound like shaking maracas, and bumping into a wall will cause him to let out a cute little squeak, but that’s about it.

Can a game with a bland presentation survive purely on the merits of a great game mechanic and superb level design? Yes, yes it absolutely can. Patrick’s Parabox is a phenomenal Puzzle game that does so much with so very little, and it seems to solidify Draknek as the king of Sokoban-style Puzzle games. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I think this may be their best game yet, and it definitely has me wondering what else they can do with this tired old genre. If you’re a fan of Puzzle games, this is definitely one to get.

tl;dr – Patrick’s Parabox is a family-friendly Sokoban-style Puzzle game with an extremely simple presentation and gameplay built around one clever mechanic, that the boxes you’re tasked with pushing around can themselves house Sokoban-style Puzzles. It’s a clever idea that this game makes use of extraordinarily well, with some truly excellent puzzle design. Don’t be discouraged by this game’s simple visuals – this is a game that Puzzle game fans will absolutely want to get ahold of.

Grade: B+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Puzzle Game, Most Original, Most Efficient Use of File Storage Space (218MB)

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