A Sokoban that’s a Thousand Times More Challenging Than its Predecessor
Before reviewing Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush, I took a run at Bunny Pit Stop, the first in the series. It was a bit like taking a warm bath before a cold one. Bunny Pit Stop was so lacking in challenge that I played it while watching a World Cup match, and the football took up more of my attention.
Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush is on the opposite side of the sokoban spectrum. There wasn’t any chance that I was going to catch up with my World Cup backlog. Vegas Rush is about as punishing as crate-pushing can get. If there wasn’t an online walkthrough for Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush, I would be rocking back and forth in my living room.
Okay, I’m exaggerating a little bit. But the comparison between the two games is really quite stark. If you breezed through Bunny Pit Stop, the graduation to Vegas Rush is steep.
About as ‘Vegas’ as a Trip to Grimsby
Like Bunny Pit Stop, Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush makes no thematic sense whatsoever. The ‘Vegas Rush’ of the title means absolutely nothing. The backgrounds aren’t remotely Vegas-themed, and you’re not pushing anything that reminds of casinos, neon lights or an Elvis residence. You’re also pushing toolkits around the sokoban arena, and the toolkits transform into tyres when you push them to their goals. I’m no mechanic, but I don’t think that’s how it works.
That’s reasonably standard for an Afil Games sokoban. They rarely make any sense. You just have to know that you’re shuffling crates (in this case toolboxes) around a puzzle grid, all with the hopeful aim of socketing them in goal-squares. Those goals are tyre rubbers, and by adding the toolkit you turn them into full tyres. You can also push the full tyre so that the toolbox re-emerges, ready for another run at a different tyre-rubber.
As with most sokoban, the challenge is not getting stuck. You can get the toolboxes immovably lodged into corners. You can push them too closely together, giving you no angle to separate them. And your mechanic rabbit can get stuck behind the toolboxes.
We had a Walkthrough Video Ready to Go
Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush takes these very standard expectations for a sokoban and makes granite-hard puzzles out of them. From about puzzle 5 onwards (there are 30 puzzles in Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush), the layouts become incredibly claustrophobic, and you need 20+ moves to complete them. There are plenty of toolboxes in play at once, and they constantly get in the way of each other. Progress can feel imperceptible: you can complete several loops of the grid, all with the aim of getting on the north side of a toolbox rather than the south side. That one difference helps when it comes to a solution.
Afil Games have had to make a formal apology for re-using puzzle layouts in their sokoban games recently, but Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush doesn’t feel rehashed. I didn’t get the sense of deja vu that has come from their games. These are punishing in entirely new ways. I was staring at some levels for ten, fifteen minutes, trying to work out how I could possibly make headway. If you like your sokoban to be cosy or simplistic, then I would suggest you look elsewhere. This is one of the hardest sokoban from Afil Games that I have played, and there are dozens of them.
What Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush is not is innovative. While it’s hard, it’s not doing anything remotely new. I completed enough levels to unlock new backdrops, but no mechanics came with them. There were no portals, no move-counters, not even a star ranking. This is very much the vanilla sokoban template that Afil Games have been employing for some years now. It’s a shame in the sense that there are so many similar games on the Xbox Store, and Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush can’t make a case for choosing this one over the others.
Harder Puzzles for Hardcore Sokofans
The differentiator, I’d guess, is that degree of challenge. The puzzle-designers have been working overtime to make something that bakes your noodle, and they’ve certainly achieved that aim. Where Bunny Pit Stop felt more like going through the motions, Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush is clever in how it hides its solutions. It can be devious in making its turning areas and wider alleyways obfuscated, or distant from the goal squares. And, as we mentioned, it’s possible to need hundreds of moves to get to a solution.
I had a better time with Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush than I did with its predecessor. The first game was a gentle massage to the brain, while this is a full blown trepanning. It may not sound like it, but I want that from a budget sokoban: to feel like a gauntlet is being tossed at my feet.
But while it’s difficult, it’s also not got anything new to say. Bunny Pit Stop: Vegas Rush is very much a product of the Afil Games sokoban production-line, and I wish it did something disruptive to go with its level of challenge. I’ll cross my fingers and hope for the next one.
Important Links
Vegas Calls As Bunny Pit Stop Returns – https://www.thexboxhub.com/vegas-calls-as-bunny-pit-stop-returns/
Buy from the Xbox Store, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bunny-pit-stop-vegas-rush-xbox-series/9N5JD2ZNXRWL/0010
Buy an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bunny-pit-stop-vegas-rush-xbox-one/9PPN52ML5VJG/0010
Buy for Windows PC – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bunny-pit-stop-vegas-rush-windows/9P23W0ZG971X/0010
