This atom will have one or more little circles orbiting around its outer edge, each or which represents a free electron in the atom’s outer shell. You start each level with control of a single atom, which can be moved around using the arrow keys. It is to Sokobond’s great credit (and to my great surprise) that it mostly succeeds.įirst, though, what is Sokobond? It’s a faux-science-y puzzler based around bonding together individual atoms to create molecules. It does mean, however, that Sokobond lives - or dies - on the strength of its level design, which needs to provide enough variety and complexity to compensate for those relatively simplistic mechanics. There has been an intentional decision to drastically limit the number of ways you can manipulate the various atoms as you try to construct a given molecule, making Sokobond a very simple game at heart. Sokobond is a much lighter puzzle game whose challenge arises from the restrictions it places on the player, and whose levels are often over in a matter of seconds if you spot the trick behind them early. SpaceChem was a comprehensive game that gave you the tools to build a freeform system that would produce the desired molecule and left you to get on with it, with each level sometimes taking multiple hours to figure out. Now, as it turned out that SpaceChem comparison isn’t that valid. This didn’t exactly augur well for Sokobond, but on the other hand its molecule-arranging gameplay did remind me of SpaceChem and SpaceChem was awesome, so I decided to give it a whirl. Co-opting of a science-y theme to make itself seem cleverer than it really is? Check. Use of the words “minimalist” and “elegant” – which too often turn out to be synonyms for “shallow” and “vapid” - to describe the game on its Steam store page? Check. Indie darling, with suspiciously high review scores from the usual suspects? Check. Sokobond is a puzzle game that tripped several of my alarm bells when I bought it.
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