A Sokoban that is Coasting Rather than going Anywhere New
With the release of Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush, we’ve taken the opportunity to put her in reverse and review the original, Bunny Pit Stop. We’ll treat it as some sokoban practice before we get deep into the engine of its sequel.
As with most sokoban games from Afil Games, Bunny Pit Stop has a theme that absolutely collapses if you think about it too much. You’re the one-bunny pit crew for – what looks like – a Formula 1 team, and your job is to shunt the F1 cars sideways into (we think) mechanic bays. Now, I’m a fairweather F1 fan, but there’s about four different details where I raise a finger and go ‘wait a second’. Being a rabbit is possibly the least dubious detail.
We’re Itching to see EA put out an Official F1 Competitor
Still, an Afil Games sokoban is not where you go for realism, so we hopped in for a play. For the uninitiated, a sokoban is a crate-pushing game, although you will have to substitute crates for F1 cars in this case. You are given a grid and some destination squares. Your aim is to push the F1 cars into all of these destination squares by the end of the puzzle. The problem is that the destination squares are awkwardly placed, the grid doesn’t give you much room, and the F1 cars keep getting in the way of each other. The Art of Sokoban is negotiating all of these issues.
There are 35 levels in Bunny Pit Stop, and 3000G for negotiating roughly half of them. Both of these numbers are higher than the average Afil sokoban: the sequel, Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush, for example, has 30 levels and 2000G. Knowing Afil, though, that 2000G will increase with a title update in the future. Queue criticisms from some in the community about easy Gamerscore.
What truly distinguishes Bunny Pit Stop, though, is that its sokoban puzzles are barely puzzles. Play it in close proximity to any other sokoban from the publisher and there’s a notable difference to how they play. In Bunny Pit Stop, the difficulty is way, way down, and the levels feel more like a process than a puzzle.
Who Knew Being in a Pit Crew was this Easy?
In a traditional sokoban, you can often be sat there for a few minutes before you start moving. You need to work out where the friction points are: which destination square is going to be the problematic one, or which crate (car) is the most likely to get stuck. Getting your character round the right side of the puzzle is often a problem. But in Bunny Pit Stop, none of these are considerations. There are virtually no friction points.
Instead, you’re given LOTS of cars (level 18 has eight, which is a large number for so early in the game), and lots of destinations. The level might be a little constrained, but not overly: you still have a decent amount of room to play with.
So where does the challenge come from? Mostly from working the crowd. You have a lot of cars to deal with, so – if you’re not careful – they can congest and give you no means of clearing them. So, it’s mostly a game of picking off the stragglers, pushing the easier cars into bays, ticking them off, and then moving onto the more challenging ones. There is very little pushing cars out of bays once they are in them, which is extremely common in games like Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush, for example.
Shunting for Fun
Now, is this alternative approach fun? That’s a very good question. I’m on the side of ‘no’. If you take the majority of the thinking out of a sokoban, you’re left with a warehouse sorting game. You’re pushing stuff out of the way, effectively tidying up. We’ve enjoyed tidying up in games like Unpacking, but it’s different here as the process isn’t all that joyful. Pushing blocks around a grid doesn’t fill us with adrenaline, and the action is too repetitive to be ‘cozy’.
It puts Bunny Pit Stop in a bit of a bind, and it can’t offer any counterpoints to change our mind. No additional mechanics turn up to make things interesting. I can’t help wondering if, at some point, there were additional mechanics: you are pushing two colours of car, red and blue, and it made me wonder whether Bunny Pit Stop originally wanted you to put blue cars in blue bays, and red cars in red bays. That would have made things interesting, and could at least have been a New Game+ feature. A Star Ranking for matching colours would have given some optional subobjectives.
All that Bunny Pit Stop can offer is more cars, more bays, and bigger levels. This does make the process more knotty, more convoluted, but I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as ‘difficult’. I felt like I was going through the motions. All I could do was gobble up Gamerscore like a demented Pac-Man.
Likely not Worth the Pit Stop
Your reaction to Bunny Pit Stop will depend on what you look for in a sokoban. If it’s a spot of brain-training, then steer away; this is one of the most basic that you can find. If you prefer to switch your brain off, or you’d like to perform a 3000 Gamerscore hit-and-run, then Bunny Pit Stop might be for you.
I’m in that first group, though. I like to feel clever as I unravel a sokoban. Bunny Pit Stop was so lacking in challenge that I felt like I was tidying the house. And I can tell you, I get enough of that at home.
Important Links
Can You Keep the Garage Running Smoothly in Bunny Pit Stop? – https://www.thexboxhub.com/can-you-keep-the-garage-running-smoothly-in-bunny-pit-stop/
Buy from the Xbox Store, optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bunny-pit-stop-xbox-series/9NDMF6QL7DSQ/0010
There’s an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bunny-pit-stop-xbox-one/9P32VTH5B938/0010
And a Windows PC drop – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bunny-pit-stop-windows/9N85LPRCWGGT/0010
