Game Reviews

Move the Box Pro

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| Move the Box Pro
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Move the Box Pro
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| Move the Box Pro

In recent years, puzzle games have become hectic, neo-infused blasts of light, all set to pounding dance music soundtracks. Time limits and red flashing countdowns have become the norm, with measured thinking replaced by quickfire stabs in the dark.

Move The Box Pro is different. You can tell because it has a smooth, easy listening soundtrack, and a soothing palette of pastel browns and greens.

This is puzzle gaming in a tweed jacket, sipping a cup of camomile tea and carefully considering its next move. It's single-player chess, if chess had been invented in the '70s by someone with a luggage fetish.

Box fresh

Stripped down to its bare bones, Move The Box Pro is a match-three puzzler. In each level you're given a set number of square crates and boxes, and within a tight move limit you have to rearrange them into chains of three or more of the same colour.

Once the boxes are connected, they disappear, meaning multi-levelled strategies are the order of the day. The boxes are stacked in precarious positions, and there's usually only one way to push to make sure you beat the level in the correct number of moves.

There's no urgency to proceedings, no timer or star system that rewards you for completing a level with a speedier score. There's just you and the boxes, in a slow-paced duel of wits, gravity, and pushing.

Walking pace

Sliding a box one place to the left, right, up, or down counts as a single move. You can swap boxes around as well, as long as they're adjacent. Other than that, you'll have to rely on your wits.

There are more than 160 levels to work your way through, in a variety of different settings, each more fiendish than the last.

There's an Arcade mode alongside the puzzle core of the game, and it plays like a slow motion Tetris. You can take as long as you'd like to decide which box to move, and when you've chosen a few more boxes fall into place.

Move the box, if you'd like

Move The Box Pro is a pleasant anachronism. It lets you play at your own pace, figuring things out as you go, rather than punishing you for missing out on the obvious. You're not chasing highscores or leaderboard-placement - you're chasing the satisfaction of cracking another puzzle.

This somewhat lethargic dawdle through Brain Town might not be to everyone's liking, and the lack of urgency means you're less likely to become addicted to Move The Box Pro than you are to some other mobile puzzling stalwarts.

Where the game succeeds is in the design of its puzzles. You'll get frustrated with them, but only because you can't work out how to get rid of those last three boxes.

It's an impressive balancing act, and one that persists throughout the game. Move The Box Pro is an intelligent, entertaining, and wonderfully well-constructed piece of laidback puzzle gaming.

Move the Box Pro

With a pace and a style all of its own, Move The Box Pro is inherently likeable. Its well-built, clever puzzles only add to that
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.