Dungeon and Puzzles

Dungeon and Puzzles is a sokoban game about… puzzles in a dungeon (no way).

In each level, you have to kill all the enemies and then reach the exit.
When you go in a direction, you won’t stop until you hit an obstacle. You also have up to 4 items (though usually there is no more than 2 in a level) to help you kill the enemies. The sword can be used to kill an enemy next to you, the shield pushes anything, the bow shoots an arrow in any direction and the glove lets you pull things.

The game only features small levels and beating all of them is very easy.
But simply beating the levels is not what this game is about : you have to get all the crowns by finding the optimal solutions. Well, it’s not always the optimal ones as the number of moves indicated can sometimes be beaten (especially in the last quarter of the game with bigger levels).
Most of the dev solutions I beat were like 1 move shorter though, so the required number isn’t always optimal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not hard to get.

I’ll say it again because it’s important : this game is about getting the shortest solution and making no mistake. If you’re not interested in that and just want to complete all the levels, there’s really no point in buying this game.

The average moves required in a level has to be something like 30 moves, it’s very rarely above 50 moves and there are plenty of levels around 20. I think it’s very reasonable.

The difficulty is pretty brutal overall. The beginning is nice, you’ll probably get the crowns from the first 30 levels… and then you’ll get stuck on a level. And on another… and so on.
As I said, it’s only small levels and that means the game is fair. It’s also important to note because like any sokoban game, trial and error is king and that can repel people if it’s tedious. But it’s not, the level design is very good and lots of levels have a pretty straightforward presentation; you’ll often be 1 or 2 moves short.
And all the challenge of the game is to find how to squeeze those 1-2 moves out, leading to plenty of eureka moments.

Dungeon and Puzzles is a very solid puzzle game. A very easy recommendation for anyone who doesn’t hate optimization in sokoban games.

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Developer: Nekolyst
Publishers: Digital Crafters, Nekolyst, Light of Creators
Platforms: Steam – Windows/macOS, Nintendo Switch, iOS
Release Date: January 14, 2021