A Decent Continuation Of Sokobear’s Seasons
I felt a small moment of shame while playing Sokobear Spring. In my review of Sokobear Autumn, I complained about it launching in Spring/Summer. And I had the same thought while booting up Sokobear Spring. But there’s an early cutscene in Sokobear Spring that pointed out my mistake: it’s Autumn in some parts of the Southern Hemisphere, which is where the Sokobear games are made. Take that, Northern Hemisphere reviewer. The world doesn’t revolve around you.
The rest of Sokobear Spring was far less surprising. We’ve had three Sokobear games before this on the Xbox, and there’s not a lot to distinguish them. Sokobear Spring doesn’t break that tradition. It takes up the baton of being a bear-based sokoban that blends sliding puzzles and sokoban crate-pushing. If you’ve played and enjoyed any of the other Sokobear offerings, then Sokobear Spring is very much a continuation – just with one extra mechanic to keep matters interesting.
A Warning That Halloween Is Approaching
This time round, Sokobear is pushing pumpkins into holes, ready for Halloween. This makes sense if you remember the whole ‘it’s spring in the south’. The pushing takes the form of a sokoban: you position your bear behind a pumpkin and tap A to send it moving in a direction. The pumpkin stops rolling once it hits a wall, at which point you can move to a different side and send it hurtling in that new direction, with a hole in the ground being the ultimate goal.
Your Sokobear also has the ability to spin around and destroy some temporary walls. These take the form of, tragically, some moles. You’re spinning and whacking them in the face, and we can only hope that you’re shooing them away rather than sending them to a dirtpile in the sky. The moles can be good or bad, depending on whether you want to clear a path or have more walls to push pumpkins into.
These are already strong components for a puzzle game, and that’s exactly what they have been for Sokobear Cave, Sokobear Autumn and so on. But Sokobear Spring has something new to try out. It comes with entrance and exit holes, denoted by arrows up and down. If you push a pumpkin into an entrance hole, it will pop up in an exit hole. They act like portals, and they make the sokoban puzzling an increment more complex.
Yep, You’re Going To Need To Think With Portals
Sokobear Spring has some fun with these holes/portals. It locks off areas that the pumpkin can’t reach, and has you teleport the pumpkin inside. In other levels, there are several portal holes, and the puzzle is often understanding – and then remembering – which portal leads where. These levels take on the identity of mazes, which is something different for the Sokobear series.
I’m not sure why Sokobear Spring made the portals so obscure, though. They aren’t coloured or patterned: you can’t tell where a hole will lead until you use it. On the plus side, it means there’s an edge of discovery to Sokobear Spring. But it also invites frustration as you try to remember where one portal leads – something that’s a particular problem in the more maze-like levels. In an ideal world, the portals would colour-in when they have been used once.
Perhaps I have played too many sokoban and become a soko-cynic, but portals are also the easiest, most over-used mechanic in these kinds of puzzle games. So, while they are new to Sokobear, they’re not new on a more macro level. I felt like I had played games like Sokobear Spring before, which removed some of the positivity that I had around a new mechanic being included.
The Sokobear Seal Of Quality
Still, it’s hard to deny that they add an extra aspect to Sokobear Spring, and the Sokobear puzzles were already pretty good in the first place. I like that the Sokobear games are zoomed out more than Afil Games’ sokoban titles, for example, as they allow for sprawling levels that are more intricate, and more satisfying as you scoot a pumpkin from one end of the screen to another. The compromise is that it can sometimes be unclear where your pumpkin is going to end up when you push it, but it’s still net-positive.
Periodic cutscenes add a bit of colour to what you’re doing, even if they have the most basic nutritional value. I’d have appreciated some reasons to replay levels – there is a move counter, but no reward for completing a level in a small number of moves – but the Undo and Reset features are quick and intuitive. And the thirty levels are about par nowadays, but each level is bigger and harder to complete than the average sokoban, helping to bolster the ‘value’ argument. Oh, and there’s 2000G on offer.
Sokobear Spring is absolutely fine. It does just enough to separate itself from other sokoban games, with a bear who can shove blocks across an entire screen, and the natty ability to spin and destroy obstructions. But it doesn’t do quite enough to separate itself from the other Sokobear titles: the addition of portals is too familiar to become Sokobear Spring’s signature move.
Sokobear Spring does everything slightly better than your average sokoban game. If that sounds like a recommendation rather than faint praise, then you’re likely a sokoban fan and Sokobear Spring is for you. Be warned, though: it won’t disappoint, but it won’t wow you, either.
Important Links
Sokobear Spring Harvests A Fresh Set Of Puzzles On Xbox And PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/sokobear-spring-harvests-a-fresh-set-of-puzzles-on-xbox-and-pc/
Buy from the Xbox Store, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/sokobear-spring/9MXQS6QKXHXL/0010
Buy for Xbox One – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/sokobear-spring-xbox-one/9N2HWTJHZ9VM/0010
Buy for Windows PC – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/sokobear-spring-windows/9NJLGGSK00VC/0010
