Boxxle

Sometimes a single idea — a crate and a target square — is all it takes to create a genre that survives for decades. Boxxle is the official portable form of Sokoban, a puzzle from 1981 that is the forefather of all games where you push a crate to a designated spot. On the small screen of the Game Boy, this pure idea proved to be perfectly at home.

The rules are ascetically simple: crates stand on a grid and you have to get them onto marked squares. The catch is that a crate can only be pushed, never pulled, so one hasty step can shove a crate into a corner from which there is no way out — and you have to start the whole level over. No enemies, no time pressure, no power-ups. Just space, your foresight and hundreds of levels of rising devilishness.

Boxxle's strength lies precisely in that austerity. Where other games distract with a graphical show, here nothing remains but logic. Each room is a self-contained puzzle you have to solve in your head before you make the first move — and the satisfaction when the last crate finally clicks into place is all the purer.

This type of game was made for a handheld console. Sokoban's monochrome display was entirely sufficient, the game could be put down and picked up anywhere, and one solved level was the ideal dose for a moment of waiting. Boxxle made sure that classic computer logic reached your pocket too.

For lovers of hard brainteasers it remains to this day a meditative, almost zen classic — a game in which time flows differently and where every click means a small victory of reason over chaos.

Why play it: Straightforward yet devilishly clever Sokoban logic in its purest possible form; if you love hard brainteasers without stress or distraction, it is a timeless classic.