Block Rogue

Some day in the distant future, you will find yourself cleaning out your garden shed. Unwieldy boxes will fall and inanimate gardening tools will try to murder you.

But it's okay: you've trained all your life for this moment by playing reams of Sokoban games on your smartphone. One of which is the simple but effective Block Rogue.

In Block Rogue, you control Ilbin, an archaeologist who has wandered into a labyrinthine temple and must push blocks and boulders around until they rest on the correct floor plates.

New elements are introduced early on, such as raised plates that form barriers. Lasers operated by levers in the corners of the room also soon appear, granting the game a welcome spike in difficulty.

Thankfully, there is also an undo button, giving you the chance to correct only your most recent move.

By solving each puzzle you progress from room to room. Every chamber has two exits, each of which leads to a different puzzle, resulting in a massive 325 rooms.

Yet in any one playthrough, you will only pass through 25 of them, the temptation being to wander through again along a different path.

And to this end, pages detailing the history of the game’s surprisingly fleshed out fantasy world can only be found in certain chambers along the way.

On top of this, a magical mirror containing Ilbin’s missing memories exists in each room.

At first, this is used as a handy tutorial device, but it soon becomes wedded to the story in simple yet funny ways. The mirror’s banter is never LOL hilarious, though it is entertaining enough to raise a smirk.

The controls can be awkward at first, as you constantly have to slide your finger across the screen in short, quick bursts to move around, but it isn’t a game breaking annoyance.

Block Rogue doesn’t add much new to the Sokoban formula, but it is often genuinely challenging. The sheer abundance of puzzles should be more than enough to keep your mind sharp for that inevitable day in the garden shed.