SokoSolitaire Review

Before going on holidays I thought having a fun puzzle game would be great to play on my Steam Deck while we were driving or sitting around in the hotel. I am a huge fan of Solitaire so I figured SokoSolitaire would fit the bill. Plus, as an added bonus, the only character is a cat in a cute suit, so how could this game not be charming?

When you begin, there are five levels of 60 unlocked. There is the option that you can select to instantly unlock five more, which gives you the first line of puzzles to solve. The premise behind the game is that you push the card into the location that displays the same card that you are currently moving. Make sure to pay attention to the colour and suit of your card to be sure it is an exact match or it won’t count. Once you get all the playing cards into the correct location, you have solved that puzzle. The game lets you reset the full puzzle by hitting the Y button, and if you just want to undo your last move you hit X (if you are using an Xbox-style controller), you can go back to when you first started the level if you would like.

The game does not mark which of the puzzles you have already completed, only the last one, so you will have to remember on your own which you have already challenged. Once you solve the last puzzle in that line — you will unlock more that you can play. I will warn you though, these levels are incredibly hard, especially when there is no pull move that you can use to manipulate the cards. The levels are small so you don’t have much room to move around these playing cards to get them where you need, so more often than not, I found myself completely lost; I had no clue as to what I had to do to get the card to where it needed to go. Maybe I just don’t have the right mindset for this game, but out of the 15 puzzles, I only successfully completed a handful. I know some people will consider this cheating, but I desperately needed a hint option to give me an idea of how to get these decks to the right location.

SokoSolitaire has very simple graphics, with the super cute cat in the smart suit you control having the most detail. Besides that, even the playing cards are incredibly basic, and the levels themselves are basically just an outline with a few walls in the way and a coloured background with splatters or line patterns. At least the kitty was super adorable! The music accompanying the game also fits the graphics. It sounds like the jazzy music that you would hear while riding the elevator or lift, or if you were in the lobby of a fancy business. It is not upbeat or energetic at all, and felt pretty boring, to be honest. 

In the main menu, you can adjust the settings where you can change gameplay style from Puzzle Solver for those who play for the experience and joy of solving puzzles or Optimise for those who want to solve the puzzle in as few moves as possible. I wasn’t great at this game, so I left mine set to the Puzzle Solver option. In the Display settings, if you are colour-blind, the game has three different settings Monochromatic, Dichromatic, or Trichromatic to choose from to make the game more playable. 

There is no story here, so I have no idea why this fancy-dressed cat is in charge of pushing around these cards. To move the kitty you will use the direction pad and not the thumbstick like you may expect. This is also how you will select which of the stages you want to challenge, though it’s a bit tricky to see as they chose to have the highlight colour be yellow on the white background of the card, a different colour would have worked better for this. 

SokoSolitaire is not the addictive puzzle game that I had expected. I found a lot about the puzzle to be incredibly difficult, and having hints or easier levels to challenge at first to teach you the trickier aspects of the game would have been useful. Even having a leaderboard didn’t add much to the game as the top ten players all took seven moves to complete the first puzzle; somehow I was ranked in the fifth spot even though it wasn’t in alphabetical order. For the average puzzle game player, I think they will find this game frustrating, but if you are a pro at games like this, you may get more enjoyment out of it than I did.