If You Can Bear Another Sokoban, This One is a Warm Cuddle
There was something satisfying about playing Sokobear Autumn during a summer heatwave. I could daydream about cool October evenings as I pushed leafpiles around a sokoban arena. I think I was mentally preparing myself for a mid-year hibernation.
Sokobear is developing into something of a franchise on Xbox. We have had Sokobear Cave, Sokobear Winter and now we have Sokobear Autumn. As the titles suggest, these are all sokoban games where you push and slide crates around a grid, aiming for a spot that represents the level’s goal. In Cave the crates were crystals, in Winter they were logs, and in Autumn they are leaf piles.
Blitzing a Path Through the Blocks
As with the first two games, Sokobear Autumn’s hook is that you can destroy some of the walls that are scattered around the grid. You can press X next to these sapling-looking obstacles and you will spin about, obliterating them. That clears the path for you to get behind your leafpile and shunt it through where the sapling once was. Equally, you might want to leave the plant alone: it’s entirely possible that it forms a helpful wall for reaching the hole where the leafpile should go.
Again, like the other two games, the number of leafiles and leaf-holes increases with the levels. You might have two or three of each to contend with. There’s no rule about which leafpile goes in which hole, so there’s a degree of freedom about how you approach each level. There are 40 levels in total, and you will need to finish roughly half of them if you want the full supplement of 2000 Gamerscore.
Sokobear Autumn is not a huge departure from the rest of the series. There’s an autumnal palette change, a different profession for the bear to get to grips with, and the sprites have all been changed to reflect the new theme. Having played a lot of Afil Games’ more progressive sliding-sokoban hybrids recently, it’s a shame to find that Sokobear Autumn is a side-step in terms of innovation. There’s the block-destruction gimmick, but that’s been the same for three games now.
When in Doubt, go Bigger
Sokobear Autumn makes up for it, to a degree, by how it handles the puzzle layouts. I got the sense that the designers had more confidence than the previous iterations. Levels are more sprawling, with a lot more saplings to destroy. Some of the levels feel more like Minesweeper levels than sokoban, as you have so many blocks to destroy and a greater freedom as a result about where you take your leaf-pile. This approach makes a huge amount of sense, as it leans into what makes Sokobear Autumn unique compared to other sokoban: the ability to bear-spin and blow things up.
As with the other Sokobear games there’s also a double-edged sword when it comes to the game’s perspective. The game screen is actually more zoomed out than your average sokoban, and that allows for bigger, longer-form puzzles. You can be pushing blocks around for an age before getting them to the exit.
But it also adds an inexact feeling to the pushing. I’m not 100% confident about where a leafpile is going to go when I push it. There is the odd moment where I will question whether the pile will hit a particular block. Some gridlines would have helped here, but those same gridlines would have damaged the immersion and cute pixel art.
Standing Out From the Pack – Albeit Slightly
There isn’t a huge amount of distance between Sokobear Autumn and the other sokoban games, particularly from Afil Games, on the Xbox Store. But there is a certain je ne sais quoi about Sokobear Autumn that puts it on a shelf above them. It’s in the combination of block-destruction, larger puzzles and cute narrative moments that something emerges. I’m also thankful to play something that doesn’t overuse the same exact template, reusing everything from the interfaces to the achievements.
If you like sokoban, crate-pushing games, then you could do a lot worse than Sokobear Autumn. It’s not got a huge amount to offer in terms of new experiences, but it’s got just enough charm and cleverness in the puzzles to get by. Plus you can close your eyes and imagine it’s a cool Autumn evening. That hit the spot for me.
Important Links
The Leaf-Clearing Adventure Begins In Sokobear Autumn – https://www.thexboxhub.com/the-leaf-clearing-adventure-begins-in-sokobear-autumn/
Buy from the Xbox Store, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/sokobear-autumn/9pl2b6crc8pk
There’s an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/sokobear-autumn-xbox-one/9n67mwx29x5w
And one for Windows PC – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/sokobear-autumn-windows/9mtbcw6985wl
