SokoCrab Review - Gaming News

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Scuttling Through SokoCrab’s 40 Stages: A Speedy Sokoban Adventure

With a low asking price dropped, the install complete, and some 30 minutes of play under your belt, it’ll be the 2000 Gamerscore and uninstallation from your hard drive that will complete the SokoCrab scramble.

We didn’t expect too much from Afil Games’ latest Sokoban-styled puzzler, but we didn’t expect things to be over in such a short time frame either. Perhaps 40 stages of simple Sokoban-box pushing was rarely going to test us for longer than that.

Sokocrab Review 1 — SokoCrab – Simple Sokoban

Beach Bummin’ with Boxes: SokoCrab’s Laid-Back Puzzle Action

SokoCrab is, in the words of Afil Games, a ‘delightful puzzle game where you control a clever crab tasked with pushing barrels onto spots‘. We can’t disagree with too much written there, and the game blurb does a brilliant job of summing up this little puzzler with aplomb. But we’re not sure SokoCrab is as delightful or clever as it makes out. It’s not much of a puzzler either – especially not one that will test the grey matter in any way.

If you’ve played any Sokoban game previously, you’ll know what to expect with this one. Treated to a number of small single screen areas, your goal is to manoeuvre your little goofy, crabby buddy (we called him Clive) in such a way as to be able to push barrels, one tile at a time, onto a number of spots. Get every barrel in the land situated upon such a place, and Clive’s goal is complete, onto the next he goes, carefree and clueless.

Claw Your Way to Easy Gamerscore: SokoCrab for Achievement Hunters

At no point will SokoCrab provide much more than that initial premise. And it’ll never, ever, leave you frustrated as to how to solve a stage. In fact, we’ve whipped through the 40 on offer in half an hour, and by our reckoning, that’s well less than a single minute per stage. Bear in mind that at one point we had to answer the door to a delivery person, and that – for some unknown reason – Stage 22 saw us using the ‘Undo’ button more than once, and we’re going to proclaim that we can solve the vast majority of the puzzles in SokoCrab under 30 seconds each. Perhaps we’re just a box-pushing god. Maybe we’ve played too many of these games previously. Chances are, SokoCrab is just a super simple playthrough that has popped up onto the Xbox Store as some achievement building fodder.

This is about as no frills as you are going to get, and even the promise of a ‘beach theme’ tends to fade into the background from the get-go. With pixel-arted visuals, blocky but clear enough, there’s little here to wow you in terms of eye candy either. And if you can manage to get through the 40 stages without turning the volume on your TV down, then you’ll be a better person than us. The audio is repetitive at best; both in terms of the soundtrack that accompanies Clive’s adventures and in the ‘thud, thud’ of knocking those boxes this way and that.

Should You Pinch those Pennies or Splurge on Something More?

And remember, with no frills, and no test of the mind, we’re struggling to find too many reasons to spend the hard earned cash on SokoCrab. But as we sit here now, we struggle to also find too many reasons to not spend it. It’s priced cheaply, and that is going to drag in a ton of players. And with Afil Games’ past history of delivering games to Xbox that could be seen as good for nothing but achievement leaderboard bragging rights, many more will see their ears perked.

If that combination of low asking price and easy Gamerscore is why you game, then by all means get SokoCrab downloaded. You’ll not be offended by what is presented your way, and you’ll be safe in the knowledge that within half an hour, or at least 45 minutes at the very most, you’ll be able to uninstall SokoCrab to make way for another similarly set game; our money is on Afil’s other recent release of Sokomonster to do the same.

The thing is, many gamers want more for their time and effort – even though SokoCrab fails to eat into either of those aspects at any point. And that in turn makes this a harder sell; a nothing game that will be forgotten in an instant. We find that a shame, because little Clive is a fun guy and his box pushing mechanics are very much on point. He even comes with some magical ‘Undo’ and ‘Level reset’ spells for when times call for such a measure. Truth be told, if you don’t sit there hammering the B (Undo) and Y (Restart) buttons for any reason other than the cool 280 Gamerscore (reset 1, 30 and 40 times) or the 310G for undoing 1, 30 or 40 times, then we’re not sure you should be picking up a controller at any point soon.

Sokocrab Review 3 — Complete it. Forget it.

A Fun but Forgettable Sokoban Romp

In summary, SokoCrab is about as simple a Sokoban puzzler as you are going to get – and it’s equally as gifting as a Gamerscore provider. With nothing to test the mind, this is one of those games in which you’ll need to consider why you game. Is it for the achievements? Fill your boots before you move onto the next. For anything other than that though? You’ll need to seriously consider whether this one is even worth the low asking price.