Block pushing

Sokoban was one of the first block-pushing video games.

Block pushing is a video game mechanic where the player is expected to push around blocks, or similar objects, to accomplish a goal. The first popular block-pushing game was Sokoban, first developed in 1981, which is an entire game built on the mechanic. Sokoban became quite popular in its native Japan, and eventually spread throughout the world. Its popularity gave rise to plenty of imitations, but the game also had a strong influence on the entire genre of puzzle video games for years to come, and the mechanic even started to show up in non-puzzle games. For example, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past contains a handful of them.

Personal

I think the first block-pushing game I played was a shareware DOS knock-off of Sokoban around the late-1990s. While I initially found the game intriguing, I quickly got bored and assumed it was the type game of fully-determined game where, once you figure all the tricks, it would just be a matter of figuring out which ones, and, in which order they would need to be applied, to beat each level. This put me off block-pushing games, and had little interest in any others for a long while, although I still enjoyed the occasional block-pushing puzzle that cropped up in non-puzzle games. It wasn't until 2015, when I played Ittle Dew, that I discovered the mechanic could be very enjoyable when used to accent good gameplay. I gained more appreciation for them in 2021 after playing the very clever Baba Is You. Then, in 2022, I wanted to beat more older games, so I played and beat Adventures of Lolo. I've since grown more of an appreciation for the mechanic, although I still don't care much for games which use it as their primary theme.

Games

These are block pushing games that are important to me. For all games, see the category.

Title	Released
Adventures of Lolo	1989-04-20
Adventures of Lolo 2	1990-03-20
Baba Is You	2019-03-13
God of Thunder	1992-??-??
Ittle Dew	2013-07-05
ZZT	1991-10-??

Links