A Monster's Expedition

Super cute, all puzzles, love the exhibits and their commentary

Super cozy and relaxing. This was my first time experiencing Sokoban puzzles, so I found this game to be quite difficult at times, especially when there's bonus game logic involved, like rolling logs over other logs. I recommend checking out the user-made guides on Steam when you get stuck and can't solve a puzzle. Many, if not most, of the guides were created before recent updates, so you might have to spend some time solving things yourself or searching harder for answers. While this game is family-friendly, some of these puzzles may be too difficult for a young child to solve. If you're buying this for a kid under 12, just know it's not a very easy game. I'm including this game in my favourite games list and will definitely play other games from this developer after I finish A Monster's Expedition.

There are, surprisingly, a *lot* of ways to push a log. I first tried this game about a year ago, played ten minutes and decided it wasn’t for me. Didn’t even make it to the title card. I’m glad I gave it another chance, because this is a lot more interesting than I originally assumed. It’s definitely still a sokoban, and most people already know if that kind of game is for them or not, but there’s enough variation to that formula here for me, a sokoban-neutral gamer, to make it all the way through the main adventure and then some. If this came out twenty years ago there would be a starting puzzle in each area with a little “tip: you can do THIS” for every new technique. But, like many other games nowadays, the puzzle of A Monster’s Expedition is just as much in learning the rules as it is finding the solution. Other than an undo button and a reset button, the only control you have is the D-pad or joystick for movement; any other interaction, such as pushing a log, happens when you move in a certain way. There are a lot of cool aha moments, way more than I thought you could get from just pushing some logs around. And without spoiling too much, when I made it to the end of the main adventure I noticed a little side area that I could get to, and after doing that I realized that there were a bunch of these challenges scattered all over the map and I just didn’t notice them. Now I wanna go back and see all the things I missed, because it seems like it was a lot. Exploring the map is a lot of fun, too. The goal for the whole game is basically “get to the next island” but you’re never quite sure if that’s gonna be one over or somewhere on the other side of the map. The map is peppered with exhibitions of human artifacts in an open-air monster museum, and I thought the writing here was good enough for a chuckle or two. The animation is nothing impressive, and in fact the game lags pretty hard on the map screen, but I really enjoyed the soft, sparse piano soundtrack, which definitely kept me calm during some particularly frustrating puzzles. I think this is a pretty good puzzle game. Could be done in short spurts or longer play sessions, simple to learn but tough to execute. Worth trying even if sokoban isn’t usually your thing.