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Dungeon And Puzzles is a lovely, efficient puzzle game

It'll make you think you could make games

A screenshot of Dungeon and Puzzles, a sokoban combat game, showing a 2D pixel dungeon with orcs, spike traps, slimes, and a sword.

I admire Dungeon and Puzzles for how efficiently made it is. It's a sokoban puzzle game about fighting through dungeons, and it's made predominantly by one person with art pulled from this $10 sprite tilset. It's also cute and smart and I've been having a grand time playing its first 25 levels.

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A brief introduction explains the rules: once you move in a direction, you can't stop until you bump into something; and the enemies never attack you, even as you run around stabbing all their mates. The challenge instead is to use those enemies as walls to stop your momentum, slash them to bits in the correct order, and line yourself up with the exit for your escape.

It then starts to layer on new abilities that force you to reconsider these rules. After the sword comes the bow and arrow, which lets you defeat enemies from a far. You can pick up the arrow to re-use it, but a dropped arrow therefore acts as a wall to stop your momentum, so you can fire it strategically to help you move around the level. A shield lets you shove enemies, gloves let you pull them, and soon you're using all of these in tandem to clear puzzles.

Simply completing a level is usually enough to let you progress, but you can also 'master' a level by completing it under a certain number of moves, and that unlocks other rooms. There are also secret levels, over a hundred rooms in total, and nice quality-of-life things like infinite undos and quick restarts.

It's lovely, basically. Dungeon And Puzzles is a simple game, but it's thoroughly charming, one of the better sokobans I've played, and it costs all of £5.79/€8/$8 on Steam.

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Graham Smith: Rock Paper Shotgun's editorial leader, corporate dad, and breezy evening news writer.
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