Zzap


Soko-Ban

Publisher: Mirrorsoft
Machine: Commodore 64/128

 
Published in Zzap #40

Soko-Ban

Mirrorsoft released Soko-Ban (Japanese for 'Warehouse Manager') earlier this year to some praise from Zzap, but the game is expensive compared to our other samples (£12.99) and comes on disk only.

The Soko-Ban of the title is faced with 50 different warehouses which have packing crates dispersed throughout them: these need to be shifted to marked storage points. Easy? Well, the task is made more difficult by the warehouseman's inability to pull cases. They can only be pushed, so care must be taken always to keep cases where the player can get behind them.

This requires much forward planning and copious thinking, essential to the prevention of rash, immobilising moves. Consequently, playing Soko-Ban is almost like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube - less abstract, but rather more difficult, and so it has enormous head-scratching appeal for any would-be logician.