Psychoban

Foam up your lips, burst a blood vessel in your eye, and make sure your straight jacket fits nice and snug because this Sokoban inspired puzzle app is going to send your brain straight to the loony bin!  Psychoban is a psychotically inspired challenge that’s sure to leave even the most brilliant of puzzle solvers scratching their heads into scabs.  Do you have what it takes to set the psycho free?

Created by Dedalord, Psychoban is centered around helping a mentally unstable psychopath, endearingly referred to as “Mental Dude”, earn his freedom by moving crates on to platforms to unlock doors.  Standing in between Mental Dude and outright freedom are 50 hard to solve rooms spread out between 4 extremely hard to escape buildings.

Along the way you’re encouraged with insults, back handed compliments, clues, and psychotically driven humor provided by the mad doctor/scientist that’s keeping you captive.  Pay attention to what’s important, and don’t get intimidated by the task at hand.  A steady and clear mind will take you a long way in this game.

Moving crates around a room probably doesn’t sound very challenging at first to most people, but let me assure you that once you’re about 20 levels deep in the game you’ll change your tune rather quickly.  There are so many levels of complexity that can be added by increasing numbers of boxes, stacks of boxes vs. stand alone boxes, gaps in the floor, varying elevations, walls, etc.  Each subtle variation exponentially increases the difficulty of the task ahead.  A player’s ability to think many moves ahead is what separates good players from the rubbish.

Overall, I enjoyed playing Psychoban.  I don’t play a lot of Sokoban games, but as far as this one goes I’d say it’s a good one.  The first 10 levels aren’t too hard, but they definitely get much harder after that.  The graphics are good, the game-play is smooth, and it’s got all the options and goodies that you could ever want in a game (Facebook, Open Feint, ability to play iPod music, and more).  By and large, Psychoban offers quite a bit for it’s $2.99 price point.  Now, do I think everybody will be a fan of the game?  Due to the the graphic nature of the game, I’d say probably not (i.e. moms).  Will seasoned strategy puzzlists and Sokoban fans enjoy it?  Yes, definitely!

Pros:

• Lots of levels and challenging puzzle game-play–50 puzzles in all
• Clean and crisp graphics, nicely laid out menus and levels
• Ability to turn off in-game captions
• Ability to listen to iPod music while playing

Cons:

• Pace of play can be slow at times, especially with captions on

Version Reviewed: 1.0.2

Requirements: iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad; iPhone OS 3.0 or later

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Posted by Ryan Johnson
on 07 28, 2010
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