Puzzle & Thinking Games · 76

Sokoban, created in Japan in the early 1980s, makes pushing boxes difficult for one reason: unlike many puzzle actions, a bad push cannot simply be pulled back. The player-facing version of the idea is simple: Puzzle designers use symmetry as both help and misdirection; a repeated pattern can reveal structure or convince the player to assume two sides behave the same when they do not. The phrase 'there must be a trick' is often correct and rarely comforting.