Yet Another Budget Sokoban, But It’s One Of The Good Ones
The Cute Whale is the the third budget sokoban game that I have played this week. I’m seeing the formula now: find a cute main character (bonfire, penguin, whale), render them in adorable pixel art, create 30 simple but fiendish box-pushing layouts, and then slap a £4.19 sticker on the front. We see you, indie game makers.
The thing is, it works well. There are clearly talented puzzle designers out there, and the price-per-puzzle isn’t extortionate. We just don’t know how to score these games. We’ve set a dangerous precedent of giving the previous two sokobans that did much the same thing 3.5 out of 5. Do we have to score them all that way, or do we start docking marks for repetition? Choices, choices.
A Whale Of A Time
The theming makes more sense than it did in Poko’s Arctic Quest or Cute Bonfire. You’re a whale, and you’re nudging turtles onto buoys. Presumably, the little ratbags have forgotten how to swim or only just started learning, as they should really be able to handle this on their own. Our headcanon is that they’re actually tortoises, trying to emulate their turtle cousins. Stay on the land little guys!
So, you’re doing the Sokoban thang by pushing the turtles in cardinal directions and onto the buoy goals. There’s no time limits or move limits. The only pressures are getting stuck: it’s all too easy to get your turtle in a corner (nobody puts turtle in the corner), or orchestrate a position where your whale can’t reach the turtles.
That’s when you reach for the Undo and Reset buttons. The Cute Whale, like most sokobans, has you sorted if you make a mistake. The Undo will take you back to the first move of the puzzle, should you want it, or you can just jab Reset if you want to untangle the mess you’ve made. We’d have taken a hint system, but the puzzles are simple enough that it’s not a huge miss.
The puzzle layouts are really rather good. One of them was super familiar, so we dropped back into Poko’s Arctic Quest and found a puzzle that was only two squares different, but we suppose the law-of-averages means that is always possible. Otherwise, these are concise, fiendish layouts that can have you flummoxed until you try something new. What if I park that turtle over there, and move that turtle off its buoy for a moment?
I’m personally a fan of the discrete, not-asking-too-much nature of these sokoban. Thirty puzzles feels right, somehow. The Cute Whale doesn’t overstay its welcome, and I walk away with a massive 2000G. Only £4.19 is lost, and I can pick up another of these sokoban, safe in the knowledge that very little has changed. Everyone’s happy.
A Warning Shot Across The Bows
There’s still the nagging thought that something has to change at some point. A spectre of diminishing returns hangs over the many, many sokoban that get released in a month. Would it be too much to ask for star ratings for each level, with three stars for the least number of moves? Or what about squares or blocks that do something different? That hint system is tempting too.
We suspect we’ll get a few more of these cutesy sokoban before that happens. You can probably come up with one yourself by looking out your window. A dog that is pushing bones into kennels. An umbrella that is pushing raindrops into puddles. Oh boy, I’m getting the hang of this.
We stand – just about – on the right side of sokoban fatigue with The Cute Whale. That’s largely down to some cracking, well thought-out puzzle layouts that kept the cynicism at bay. Take your 3.5 out of 5, The Cute Whale, but we’re hoping for new mechanics or additional challenges for the next one that gets pushed around the corner.
Important Links
Restore Harmony to the Sea as The Cute Whale – https://www.thexboxhub.com/restore-harmony-to-the-sea-as-the-cute-whale/
Buy from the Xbox Store, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/the-cute-whale-xbox-series/9p172xt7cx9f
Or buy an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/the-cute-whale-xbox-one/9n75r850wrs3
Or that for Windows PC – https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9p3w4klkg7rv?hl=en-GB&gl=GB
