The wonderful world of box pushing…
Remember the days when box pushing was fun? Slide a box here, move there, make sure you don’t trap yourself. Ahh, the joys of being a warehouse keeper. What? Those days aren’t over. You can experience them over and over again. That’s right be it PC or Mac, XBOX or Playstation, you can have the fun again of playing the box pusher. You know the game I’m talking about. Sokoban and it’s millions of variations. In fact even yours truly had the opportunity to create levels for a 3d Sokoban-style game called Grek’s Puzzle Challenge (the last game on the page). Originally created in 1980 by some Japanese dude (you can read the Wikipedia entry as linked above), it has come to be loved and played by millions. It’s no surprise, then, that it should come to Xbox Live Community games, in the form of Penga’s Peril.
Penga’s Peril is actually a small game made to promote Abandon Interactive’s Freaky Creatures. Freaky Creatures is sort of a cross between Pokémon and an MMOG but for slightly older audiences (and in fact for all audiences but I meant as opposed to Pokémon’s young audience). You have monsters that battle it out online. Your “freaky creatures” can also have pets. One of the pets is the Penga, a sort of space penguin. Okay now with all of this out of the way (I hate having to explain a bunch of stuff before getting to my review) on with the review. Penga’s Peril is a Sokoban style push box game. Your goal is to get to the exit hole (gold colored hole). You can be stopped by ice and also gaps between the floor. Luckily you can push boxes to fill in the floor gaps to allow you to cross safely. There are also green teleport holes and another Freaky Creatures pet called a Puff Puff. Of course I didn’t explain the dual nature of the pets. They have a nice and a mean side. Obviously the Penga is showing its nice side, and the Puff Puff their mean side. It’s a relatively simple affair after you’ve figured that out. You can fall off the edge, and you do have only 3 lives.
Control is easy, simply move with the left thumb-stick or the d-pad. A and B do what they usually do in XBOX games, which is confirm or back out. Simple as that. The graphics are really well done, although I’m fairly certain they remain the same out of the 50 levels it has. I’ve only played the trial, but according to all the screenshots I see, it’s the same background and same theme for all levels. Good because it means the quality is high, bad because it means that it’s monotonous. The game is fairly fun however. The music while professional is a little too ominous for this type of game. The sound effects are adequate.
Final Analysis: If you’re in the mood for a good push-box game and you’re into Freaky Creatures, then Penga’s Peril might just be for you.
Name: Penga’s Peril
Developer: Abandon Interactive Entertainment
Price: 200 MSP / $2.50
Where you can get it: Xbox Live Community Games on the Xbox 360
Tags: Abandon Interactive Entertainment, Casual, fun, game, games, independent, Indie, sokoban, xbla, xblig, xbox, xbox live, xbox live community games