Sokoban

Sokoban (Japanese for "warehouse keeper") is a transport puzzle in which the player pushes boxes around a maze, viewed from above, and tries to put them in designated locations. Only one box may be pushed at a time, not two, and boxes cannot be pulled. As the puzzle would be extremely difficult to create physically, it is usually implemented as a video game. Sokoban was created in 1982 by Hiroyuki Imabayashi, and was published by Thinking Rabbit, a software house based in Takarazuka, Japan. Thinking Rabbit also released three sequels: Boxxle, Sokoban Perfect and Sokoban Revenge. Implementations of Sokoban have been written for numerous computer platforms, including almost all home computer and personal computer systems. Versions also exist for several hand held and video game consoles, including mobile phones. The text-based computer game NetHack contains a sequence of dungeon levels deliberately designed to simulate a Sokoban game.

Sokoban variants

Several variants of the Sokoban game have been created. In the standard game, the mazes are laid out on a rectangular grid, or tiling. Several variants apply the rules of Sokoban to mazes laid out on other tilings. Hexoban uses a tiling of regular hexagons and Trioban a tiling of equilateral triangles. In another variant, called Multiban, the player can switch control between multiple pushers. Some other transport puzzles are similar in appearance to Sokoban and may be considered as variants of it. For example, Interlock and Sokolor require all boxes that have the same colour to be placed so that they are adjacent to each other – rather than being placed on specific goals. Interlock and another variant, Sokonex, add other game elements such as holes and movable laser beams that limit movement, etc. Another variant called Block-o-Mania also features different box colours (each of which has to be placed on the appropriately coloured tile), as well as one-way passages.

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