Thanks to Doc Holiday Games for the review code

Title: Super Retro Boxbot
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $9.99
Release Date: 01/08/2024

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Story

In this puzzle platformer inspired by the DOS era of gaming, you take control of a robot working in a warehouse and moving around boxes! There’s no plot here, outside of what you make up in your own head, but there doesn’t need to be. All you need to know if that you move boxes and you’re a robot. Have fun.

Presentation

Super Retro Boxbot looks rather crude at first, with a basic space background and very, very simple sprites. Still, there are some cool details I noticed which give it some props. First off, your animations are pretty slow and rigid, akin to some early-era DOS games. Of course, you can increase your movement speed or even remove the movement animation altogether for snappy movement, but it definitely feels like the dev earnestly tried to stick within his inspired boundaries, and I appreciate that.

Everything just looks to have a nice little MS paint-look to it, not unlike how some early Windows games appeared to be. The only visual asset I feel is a bit out of place is the Bonus collectible, which is all wavy and definitely seems more complex/shaded than the rest of the sprites. The music is also a sore spot here, since a lot of it is incredibly generic and seems to have some stock stuff in there as well, but luckily you have the option to just fully disable the BGM, and honestly? Playing with only sound effects fits the early DOS vibe like a glove.

Gameplay

Each stage of Super Retro Box Bot has you tasked with reaching the end goal of a stage, usually by moving your robot and lifting crates placed around the stage in order to make a path to the exit. Sometimes you’ll need to grab a key first, sometimes you can nab a bonus to unlock a tricky bonus level, and sometimes you’ll get stuck or die. Boxbot honestly is just a simple set of Sokoban like puzzles, with your robot being able to lift, move, and drop the boxes as you’d expect, with the ability to rewind moves, place temporary save states within a level, or reset the stage entirely to fix any mistakes you may cause, which are some nice quality of life options for this sort of game.

And well… That’s the core of the gameplay, for better or worse. I don’t mind a simple game like this though, and I found some of the levels to give me a good challenge, especially the bonus stages, one of which stumped me for a good while before I finally figured it out. Even with only a few assets available, these stages will get your brain working, although I wish there was more to the level editor than the limited assets it offers now, since what you see is what you typically get for the main game stages.

You can’t even share or download edited stages in-game using the steam workshop, but you can export/import stage files if you manage to obtain them out of the game, and while it doesn’t work the best on Steam Deck, the cloud saves do make it trivial to back it up to a windows computer, export your level file, and then do with that as you will. I will give props for just how handy the control scheme is on Deck, though; controlling the core game works wonderfully, and using the sticks and shoulder buttons for level editing works better than it has any right to, even though editors like these tend to be very reliant on cursors and a keyboard. (which are also an option if you play this on a desktop)

Still, the bulk of the game are the included set of stages, and there’s still a good amount of challenge and content here even with the limited stage assets. Lots of tricky box shenanigans, key hiding, elevator action, and traps that’ll get you stuck or make you fall to your doom. It controls simply and does what you’d expect a sokoban like to do, and you can even hold both triggers and the X button down to reveal hints if you really get stuck, though even if you are stumped, the game is generous enough to let you play levels around the one you’re currently having trouble with, so you won’t just hit a brick wall and be unable to play any future stages like some of these older puzzlers would have you do. (Though for the bonus levels, you gotta unlock all of them by earning their bonus reward the hard way in a normal stage)

It might not break new ground or throw in crazy powerups or gimmicks, but Boxbot does simplicity fine enough to make it a fun companion to watching a stream or TV show or whatever you’re doing in a chair with your laptop or deck.

If there’s one gripe with how the game plays that I’d like a fix for, it would be having some sort of automatic undo take place when you fall into a pit. This is basically how you “die” in the game and it automatically resets the entire level, so if you forget to make a temporary save state in one and fall down, you won’t be able to undo that mistake with B like you normally would, and that can lead to a frustrating need to retrace your steps. Otherwise, the core game controls fine and offers a serviceable puzzling experience with beating stages in limited moves as a bonus challenge.

Conclusion

Ultimately, this game caught my attention and had me willing to give it a spin since it honestly felt like a passion project for someone who was clearly a fan of old DOS puzzlers. I can’t say that Super Retro Boxbot comes close to exceeding or even being on par with those games, as it really doesn’t have any new ideas to offer, but the levels I experienced were rather fun and to the point, and playing around with the level editor was surprisingly comfy on my Steam Deck, even with the current lack of a steam workshop.

Really if you’ve played any sokoban puzzler of sorts or even the DOS games Boxbot directly takes inspiration from, you’ll sort of know what to expect here, and while that’s still a solid amount of puzzling fun, that also is a rather limited amount of variety for the current asking price and won’t do much to get you into block moving if other games didn’t help.

The level editor is a promising step into making this a fun community for custom content akin to how Chuck’s Challenge panned out, though, and I hope we see more improvements and focuses on that to enable easier sharing and more tools to play with in the editor. Otherwise, you’ll have a decent time playing the solo stages, and pulling your hair out trying to par them. I just wish there were more cool gimmicks and risks taken with the stages as a whole, but overall, a fun effort puzzler fans will enjoy for a while.

I give Super Retro Box Bot a 6 out of 10.