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Patrick’s Parabox review: a super smart puzzler of infinite depthTo infinity and beyond
To infinity and beyond
The four-sided heroes ofPatrick’s ParaboxandWilmot’s Warehousewould be great friends, I think. They both specialise in the placement and movement of boxes, and they both share the same cheery disposition. Sure, Patrick may not have the same pointy nose or cheeky smile of his mate Wilmot, but the way his eyes rove from side to side as he wiggles to the beat of Priscilla Snow’s meditative and upbeat electronic soundtrack is surely a sign of someone who is truly in love with what they do.
If anything, I reckon Wilmot would be a wee bit jealous of Patrick. You see, in Patrick’s line of work, his cubes contain multitudes, to misquote that famous Walt Whitman line. As long as they’re resting against a hard surface, cubes can be packed into other cubes in Patrick’s Parabox like a stack of matryoshka dolls. They can also be unpacked in the same way, allowing him to navigate the tight constraints of his respective puzzle arenas with surprising dexterity. It’s like he’s discovered the TARDIS of sokoban-style cube-pushing, if you will, and cor, just imagine what Wilmot could do with such technology. That warehouse would be immaculate.
Patrick’s Parabox Release Date TrailerWatch on YouTube
Patrick’s Parabox Release Date Trailer
That’s not to say Patrick’s Parabox is an easy sokoban puzzler, mind. LikeBonfire PeaksandA Monster’s Expeditionbefore it, this is a box-pushing puzzle game that really flexes those little grey cells. Indeed, the game’s own tips section warns that these puzzles are “meant to be challenging” and that there’s “no expectation of solving them quickly”. There’s a lot of them, too. Of the 350+ puzzles crammed into this seemingly infinite universe of boxes within boxes, I’ve unlocked around 100 so far, and solved around 75 of them - and even then there’s a good proportion of that 75 that I’ve been requested not to talk about for fear of spoiling some of its surprises.
I’ll admit, many of these harder puzzles required a fair bit of trial and error before I landed on the correct solution, but the beauty of Patrick’s Parabox is that rarely falls into that interminable trap of making you feel like a dunce smashing their head against a wall ad infinitum (I’m looking at you,Baba). That’s partly down to its intuitive controls. Patrick himself is mapped to the arrow keys (or d-pad on a controller), but there are also dedicated keys for undo, redo and a complete, instant reset, giving you the same speed and efficiency as tearing out a page of a notebook or rubbing out fevered scribbling if you need to try again or correct a mistake. The immediacy of it all is intensely satisfying, offering plenty of room to play and experiment as you figure things out. Heck, there’s even an option to unlock every single puzzle so you can just have at it and sample everything the game has to offer if you prefer - which is quite possibly the most generous thing I’ve seen in a puzzle gameever.
Mostly, though, it’s just the sheer brilliance of Patrick’s puzzles that makes it stand out. There’s just so much to admire and delight in here, and lemme tell you, the puzzles I can’t talk about are just chefkiss.gif genius. Truly wonderful stuff. Just when you think you’ve got the measure of where this box shuffler’s going, it pulls the recursive rug out from under you and captivates you all over again. Given what we’re dealing with here, I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this is an infinitely pleasing puzzle game. If I were Wilmot, I’d be green with envy.
