Sokoban

Last updated

Sokoban
Official Sokoban website banner.png
Sokoban official fan kit banner
Genre(s) Puzzle
Developer(s) Thinking Rabbit
ASCII
Unbalance
Publisher(s) Thinking Rabbit
ASCII
Unbalance
Creator(s)Hiroyuki Imabayashi
Platform(s)
  • Various
First releaseSokoban
1982
Latest releaseThe Sokoban
2021

Sokoban [a] is a series of puzzle video games in which the player pushes boxes around in a warehouse, trying to get them to storage locations. Hiroyuki Imabayashi created the first Sokoban game in 1981 as a personal project. That game was the basis for the first commercial release, published in Japan in 1982 by his company Thinking Rabbit for the NEC PC-8801 computer. Ports and new titles were released for various platforms over the years. Sokoban became popular in Japan and internationally, and the series has remained active, with the most recent title released in 2021. Sokoban has inspired unofficial versions, thousands of custom puzzles, similar games, and artificial intelligence research.

Contents

Gameplay

A Sokoban puzzle being solved Sokoban ani.gif
A Sokoban puzzle being solved

The warehouse is composed of walls and pathways. Pathways are connected floor squares. A floor square may be empty, occupied by the player, or occupied by a box. A number of floor squares, equal to the number of boxes, are marked as storage locations. The objective of the puzzle is to push all boxes onto storage locations. [1]

The player can move one square at a time, either horizontally or vertically, onto empty floor squares. [2] Boxes and walls block the player's movement, but the player can walk up to a box and push it to an empty square directly beyond it. If a box is pushed against a wall or another box, it does not move. Boxes cannot be pulled. [3]

Playing Sokoban requires thinking several steps ahead and visualizing all possible outcomes. [4] Players should think carefully and thoroughly before pushing a box to prevent it getting trapped against a wall or other boxes. [5] A bad move can cause a deadlock, a situation from which the puzzle cannot be solved, regardless of subsequent moves. [6]

Deadlocks

Common deadlocks are: [7]

Sokoban deadlocks.png
  1. Two boxes placed together along a wall.
  2. A box in a corridor alongside a wall, which can still be pushed, but permanently lacks access to any storage location.
  3. A box in a corner.
  4. A box in a dead end.
  5. Four boxes in a square formation.
  6. Three boxes forming an L-shape in a wall corner.

History

In 1981, Hiroyuki Imabayashi created the first Sokoban game as a personal project for the NEC PC-8001 computer. The game used text-based graphics and featured five challenging levels designed by him. For the core mechanic, he was inspired by one part of the gameplay of Hudson Soft's 1980 action game, Aldebaran #1, for the MZ-80K, [8] where the player pushed luggage to act as a wall to prevent radiation. Imabayashi conceptualized that in the warehouse, the boxes had to be organized, but they themselves also became obstacles in the process. He enjoyed playing the game with friends at his home. During this time, his wife's family had owned a disc record store that had a small computer corner. By chance, a salesman saw the game and suggested that it would sell. Imabayashi ported the game to the more advanced NEC PC-8801 computer from the store's corner, enhancing the graphics and expanding the levels to 20. In 1982, he founded his company, Thinking Rabbit, based in Takarazuka, Japan, and in December released this PC-8801 version as the first commercial Sokoban game. [9] [10] [11] [12]

In subsequent years, ports and new titles for various home computers and video game consoles were released, developed by Thinking Rabbit or other companies under license. [13] [14]

In 1988, Spectrum HoloByte published Sokoban in the U.S. for the IBM PC, Commodore 64, and Apple II as Soko-Ban, [15] licensed by ASCII. [16]

In 1990, FCI released Boxxle for the Game Boy in both North America and Europe, [17] followed by Boxxle II in 1992. [18]

Between 1996 and 2000, several Sokoban games were released for Windows and PlayStation in Japan. [19] [20] [21]

In 2001, the Japanese software company Falcon acquired the copyright to the official Sokoban games and the trademarks for Sokoban and Thinking Rabbit. [22] Since then, Falcon has continued to develop and license official Sokoban games.

Between 2004 and 2007, several Sokoban titles for Japanese mobile phones were distributed through i-mode by Square Enix and Dwango. [23] [24]

Versions

Since its debut in 1982, Sokoban has been released on various platforms, primarily in Japan but also in other regions. Most titles are independent without a continuous narrative, though a few are direct sequels to a specific earlier release—for example, Sokoban 2 (1984) follows Sokoban (1982), and Sokoban Revenge (1991) is a sequel to Sokoban Perfect (1989). The following table lists a selection of official Sokoban titles. [25]

RegionYearTitlePlatformDeveloperPublisher
Japan1982-1983Sokoban (倉庫番) NEC PC-8801
NEC PC-6001mkII
Sharp MZ-2000
Sharp X1 		Thinking Rabbit Thinking Rabbit
1983Sokoban Extra Edition (倉庫番[番外編]) [26] NEC PC-8801 PC Magazine  [ ja ]
1984Sokoban 2 (倉庫番2) [27] NEC PC-8801
NEC PC-8001mkII
Fujitsu FM-7
Sharp X1		Thinking Rabbit
1986Namida no Sokoban Special (涙の倉庫番スペシャル) Famicom Disk System ASCII ASCII
1989Sokoban Perfect (倉庫番Perfect) NEC PC-9801
Sharp X68000
Sharp X1
MSX2		Thinking RabbitThinking Rabbit
1991Sokoban Revenge (倉庫番Revenge)NEC PC-9801Thinking RabbitThinking Rabbit
1993Super Sokoban (Super倉庫番) Super Famicom Thinking Rabbit Pack-In-Video
1999Power Sokoban (Power倉庫番)Super Famicom Nintendo Nintendo
2018Sokoban Smart (倉庫番スマート) Windows FalconThinking Rabbit
North America1988Soko-Ban IBM PC
Commodore64
Apple II 		ASCII Spectrum HoloByte
TRS-80 Color Computer 2 Spectral Associates Tandy Corporation
1990Boxxle Game Boy Atelier Double FCI
1990Shove It! The Warehouse Game Sega Genesis NCS  [ ja ]DreamWorks
1990Boxyboy TurboGrafx-16 Media Rings NEC
1992Boxxle IIGame BoyAtelier DoubleFCI
Worldwide2016Sokoban Touch Android
iOS 		FalconThinking Rabbit
2021The Sokoban Nintendo Switch
PlayStation 4 		Unbalance  [ ja ]Unbalance

Reception

In an October 1983 review, Pasocom Game Ranking Book scored Sokoban (1982) 94 out of 100 points. [28] A December 1983 issue of MICOMGAMES wrote that the puzzle's concept is simple but requires thinking comparable to Go or Shogi, and that "once you start playing, it's hard to stop" (translated from Japanese). [29] By June 1984, the developer reported that the game had sold 22,000 copies in Japan, [30] and by March 1985, it had reached 30,000 copies. [31]

Spectrum Holobyte reported that Sokoban was a hit in Japan, selling over 400,000 copies there before the 1988 release of the title Soko-Ban in the United States. [32]

In 1988, Soko-Ban received a positive review for its IBM PC and Commodore 64 versions from Computer Gaming World , which described the game as simple yet mentally challenging and noted its addictive nature. [33] In Dragon magazine, reviewers rated the IBM PC version 4½ out of 5 stars. [34] In Computer Entertainer newsletter, the Apple II version was recommended and received 3½ out of 4 stars for graphics and the same rating for gameplay and entertainment. [35]

In 1990 issues of Game Player's magazine, Tom R. Halfhill reviewed several console Sokoban games. He reviewed Shove It!, noting it was a challenging game that required players to carefully plan their moves and that its unhurried pace was a refreshing respite from frenzied action games, although all 160 puzzles were essentially the same. [36] He reviewed Boxxle, stating that it also required careful planning or plenty of trial and error (usually both), and that its gameplay could become repetitive because the only variations in the 108 screens were the number and arrangement of crates and the shape of the rooms. [37] He reviewed Boxyboy, highlighting its logical, untimed puzzles and describing it as a welcome change from typical action games. He noted that it was "virtually identical" to Shove It! and Boxxle. [38]

Legacy

Name genericization

The name Sokoban is a registered trademark for video game titles. However, the core mechanic—pushing boxes to storage locations on a grid—is not protected by copyright or patent. This has allowed the widespread creation of numerous unofficial versions. [39] As a result, the term "Sokoban" has become genericized; it is synonymous with the genre of box-pushing puzzle games. [40]

Cultural impact

An active fan community has produced thousands of custom puzzles, [41] and software tools, including puzzle editors, solvers, [42] and solution optimizers. [43]

Derivatives

Numerous games have introduced variations on Sokoban’s mechanics, rules, and objectives.

In Picoban, the goal is to reach a green stone, often blocked by one or more doors that require collecting keys or placing boxes on all storage locations. [44] In Beanstalk, the objective is to push four items—a shovel, a bean seed, fertilizer, and a watering can—into a target square in a fixed sequence. [45] In Pukoban, the character can pull boxes in addition to pushing them. [46] In Sokoboxes Duo, two pushers must collaborate to solve the puzzle. [47]

Variants

Hexoban uses a hexagonal grid instead of a square grid, allowing movements in six directions instead of four. [48] In Multiban, the puzzle contains more than one pusher. [49]

In Sokoban Limit the puzzles must be solved within a very strict number of moves. [50]

Some unofficial Sokoban programs feature a "reverse mode" in which players play a puzzle backward. Starting with all boxes on storage locations, they pull the boxes to return to the initial puzzle state. [51]

Computer science research

Sokoban has been studied using the theory of computational complexity. The computational problem of solving Sokoban puzzles was first shown to be NP-hard. [52] [53] Further work proved it is also PSPACE-complete. [54] [55]

Solving non-trivial Sokoban puzzles is difficult for computers because of the high branching factor (many legal pushes at each turn) and the large search depth (many pushes needed to reach a solution). [56] [57] Even small puzzles can require lengthy solutions. [58]

The Sokoban game provides a challenging testbed for developing and evaluating planning techniques. [59] The first documented automated solver, Rolling Stone, was developed at the University of Alberta. It employed a conventional search algorithm enhanced with domain-specific techniques such as deadlock detection. [60] [61] A later solver, Festival, introduced the FESS search algorithm and became the first automatic system to solve all 90 puzzles in the widely used XSokoban test suite. [62] [63] Despite these advances, even the most sophisticated solvers cannot solve many highly complex puzzles that humans can solve with time and effort, using their ability to plan ahead, recognize patterns, and reason about long-term consequences. [64] [65] [66]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Japanese: 倉庫番, Hepburn: Sōko-ban; lit. 'warehouse keeper' [1]

References

  1. 1 2 Yoshio Murase; Hitoshi Matsubara; Yuzuru Hiraga (1996). Norman Foo; Randy Goebel (eds.). Automatic Making of Sokoban Problems. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 592. ISBN   978-3-540-61532-3.
  2. ↑ 倉庫番 [Sokoban]. ログイン (雑誌)  [ ja ] (in Japanese). August 1983. p. 125. 人間はたてよこ 4 方向の動きのみ可能で[Humans can move only in the four directions—up, down, left, and right]
  3. ↑ "倉庫番とは" [What is Sokoban]. Sokoban.jp (in Japanese). Retrieved August 25, 2025.
  4. ↑ "Micomgames-magazine-dec-1983-sokoban" 倉庫番. MICOMGAMES (in Japanese). Vol. 1, no. 1. December 1983. p. 38. 考えずにスイスイ荷物を動 かすと, 最後は必ず行き詰まる. 倉庫番で最 も重要なのは、最初の一手、この一手を実行 する前に、先の先まで読み切ることが大切.[If you move boxes around without thinking ahead, you will inevitably end up at a dead end. In Sokoban, the most critical move is the very first one — before making it, you must think several moves ahead and visualize all possible outcomes.]
  5. ↑ 倉庫番 [Sokoban]. ログイン (雑誌)  [ ja ] (in Japanese). August 1983. p. 125. 倉庫はすべて迷路的な作りになっているから、充分に考えてから荷物の整理にかかるのがカシコイ遊びかた.通路がせまいため、安易に動かすと荷物と壁とのハサミ打ち、なんてことになりかねない.[The warehouse is built like a maze, so it's smart to think carefully before pushing any boxes. The passages are narrow, and careless moves could leave a box trapped against the wall or other boxes.]
  6. ↑ Jean-Noël Demaret; François Van Lishout; Pascal Gribomont (2008). Hierarchical Planning and Learning for Automatic Solving of Sokoban Problems (PDF). pp. 1, 2. a bad move can lead in Sokoban to a deadlock, a situation in which the solution game state is not reachable anymore.
  7. ↑ "こうなるとアウトだよ" [If it gets to this, it's unsolvable]. ja:ファミコン通信 (in Japanese). July 1986. p. 30.
  8. ↑ "Aldebaran". 月刊マイコン  [ ja ] (in Japanese). January 1980. pp. 22–28.
  9. ↑ "ごあいさつ" [Greetings]. Sokoban.jp (in Japanese). Falcon Co., Ltd. 「倉庫番」が生まれたのは1981年の桜の花びらが舞う春でした. [...] とにかく荷物を押すというキャラクターの動きが以前から気になっていた私は、簡単なBasic言語でパズルとして組み上げたのでした.構想として、片づけるべき荷物が片づけの邪魔をするというものにしたかったのです.プログラムは割とホイホイと完成しましたが、問題となるべき面の作成には苦労しました. [...] やがて、いくつかの面を完成させた私は、知人や友人を家に招いてトライさせては楽しんでいました.ああでない、こうでないと、友人、知人が悩む姿を見ながら、ほくそ笑んでいたのです. [...] それがひょんなことから、当時、操業を始めたばかりのソフトウエア流通会社の営業マンの目に止まることになったのです. [...] 「倉庫番」を見たその営業マンが一言.売れるから作れ、と. [...] 早速、製品作りの準備を始めたのでした.そして1982年、シンキングラビットという会社を作り「倉庫番」を発売しました.[Sokoban was born in the spring of 1981 [in Japan], when cherry blossoms danced through the air. [...] I had long been fascinated by the simple action of a character pushing luggage-blocks, so I built that movement into a puzzle using BASIC. My idea was that the very boxes meant to be cleared away would also get in the way of tidying. The program itself came together fairly quickly, but designing levels that provided a real challenge proved difficult. [...] Eventually, after finishing several levels, I invited friends and acquaintances over to my home to try them, secretly grinning as I watched them struggle—'not this way, maybe that way.' [...] By chance, the game then caught the eye of a salesman from a newly established software distribution company. [...] After seeing Sokoban, he said just one thing: 'This will sell. Make it.' [...] I immediately began preparing it as a product. And so in 1982, I founded a company called Thinking Rabbit and released Sokoban.]
  10. ↑ 考えるウサギはパソコンの野を駆ける! [The thinking rabbit runs through the fields of the computer!]. ログイン (雑誌)  [ ja ] (in Japanese). December 1983. pp. 136–139. そのPC-8001で作ったゲームの中にシンキングラビットの第1作であり、 現在もヒット中の "倉庫番" の原型がある.内容はほぼ同じだが、○×□のキャラクタ表示で画数は5面.友人知人を家に集めては、内輪で楽しんでいたものだ.ゲームセンスの卓抜さは、3年前すでに目立っていたのである. 「近くにある妻の実家のレコード店に、パソコンコーナーを設けるという話が もちあがりまして、直接僕はタッチし てなかったんですが、そのとき "倉庫番" を見て、これは売れる! と助言してくれた人がいたんです」 パソコンコーナーに入ったPC-8801を利用して、デザインを決めグラフィックスをきれいにして、20面まで制作.[Among the games developed for the PC-8001 was the prototype of Sokoban, the first title by Thinking Rabbit and a game that is still popular today. The core design was nearly identical to the commercial release, but used text characters (○, ×, and □) for display and had only five levels. He often invited friends and acquaintances to his home and they enjoyed the game together. His exceptional game design skills had been evident since at least three years earlier. "Around that time, plans came up to add a computer section to a nearby record store owned by my wife's family. Though I wasn't directly involved, someone who saw Sokoban at the time insisted, 'This will sell!'" Using the more advanced PC-8801 from the store's computer corner, he enhanced the graphics, polished the design, and expanded the game to 20 levels.]
  11. ↑ "Thinking Rabbit – 1983 Developer Interview - shmuplations.com". March 30, 2022.
  12. ↑ "My conversation with Mr Hiroyuki Imabayashi". Sokoban was inspired other video game. It's a Hudson game. It was an action game in which luggage was moved as a wall to prevent radiation. I made that movement into a puzzle. [...] I found the following video about Hudson's "ALDEBARAN".
  13. ↑ "Sōkoban series - MobyGames". Archived from the original on July 22, 2025. The original puzzle game by Thinking Rabbit and any follow-ups with an official license.
  14. ↑ "ごあいさつ" [Greetings]. Sokoban.jp (in Japanese). Falcon Co., Ltd. そして1982年、シンキングラビットという会社を作り「倉庫番」を発売しました.その後30年以上にも渡り、ライセンス契約も含め多くのハードウエアで「倉庫番」を移植することができました.[And so in 1982, I founded a company called Thinking Rabbit and released Sokoban. Over the following 30 years, I watched as Sokoban was ported to numerous hardware platforms, including through licensing agreements.]
  15. ↑ Austin Barr; Calvin Chung; Aaron Williams (2021). Block Dude Puzzles are NP-Hard (and the Rugs Really Tie the Reductions Together) (PDF). CCCG (2021). p. 1. Spectrum Holobyte published the game under the name Soko-Ban for American personal computers in 1988, which was the same year it brought Tetris to the same platform.
  16. ↑ Soko-Ban (Media notes). Spectrum Holobyte. 1988. p. box. Licensed from ASCII Corporation.
  17. ↑ "Put Your Brain Action". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 10. Sendai Publishing. May 1990. p. 17.
  18. ↑ "Boxxle II". GB Action. No. 4. Future Publishing. September 1992. p. 20.
  19. ↑ "究極の倉庫番 まとめ [PS]". ファミ通.com. Archived from the original on October 9, 2016.
  20. ↑ "倉庫番ベーシック まとめ [PS]". ファミ通.com. Archived from the original on October 9, 2016.
  21. ↑ "倉庫番 難問指南 まとめ [PS]". ファミ通.com. Archived from the original on October 9, 2016.
  22. ↑ "Sokoban Official Site". Sokoban.jp (in Japanese). Retrieved August 19, 2025. "倉庫番", "sokoban", the rabbit mark and "THINKING RABBIT" are trademarks or registered trademarks of Falcon co.,ltd. in Japan and other countries. [...] COPYRIGHT©2001 FALCON CO.,LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  23. ↑ "ja:スクウェア・エニックス ポケットパズル" [Square Enix Pocket Puzzles] (in Japanese). Archived from the original on December 14, 2005.
  24. ↑ "ja:倉庫番シリーズ" [Sokoban Series] (in Japanese). Archived from the original on March 23, 2007.
  25. ↑ "倉庫番の歴史" [The History of Sokoban] (in Japanese). Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  26. ↑ 倉庫番[番外編]. PCマガジン  [ ja ] (in Japanese). August 1983. pp. 52–56. 今回はこのゲームを開発した THINKING RABBIT さんにお願いして, 市販品とは別に10の倉庫をつくってもらいましたので[This time, we asked THINKING RABBIT, the developer of this game, to build 10 warehouses separately from the commercial release]
  27. ↑ 倉庫番2. ログイン (雑誌)  [ ja ] (in Japanese). July 1985. p. 76. パズルソフトのベストセラー倉庫番の新たな50面と迷路エディタがついた倉庫番 2 .[Sokoban 2, the sequel to the bestselling puzzle game Sokoban, includes 50 new levels and a maze editor.]
  28. ↑ 倉庫番. ja:パソコンゲームランキングブック. October 1983. p. 28. Archived from the original on May 31, 2025.
  29. ↑ "Micomgames-magazine-dec-1983-sokoban" 倉庫番. MICOMGAMES (in Japanese). Vol. 1, no. 1. December 1983. p. 38. このパズル, アイデアは簡単で, だれでもすぐに憶えられるけど, ウンウン考えなければいけないのは, 碁や将棋と同程度かそれ以上.しかも, | 度やりだしたらなかなかやめられない.[The concept of this puzzle is simple, and anyone can learn it quickly, but the amount of thinking required is comparable to, or even greater than, that of Go or Shogi. Moreover, once you start playing, it's hard to stop.]
  30. ↑ ソフトハウス訪問 [Visiting a Software Company]. POPCOM (in Japanese). June 1984. p. 131.
  31. ↑ 作者が語る自信のニューソフト [The creator proudly presents their new software]. POPCOM (in Japanese). March 1985. p. 29.
  32. ↑ Lafe Low (November 1988). "News Line; Made in Japan". inCider . p. 14.
  33. ↑ Wagner, Roy (May 1988). "Puzzling Encounters" (PDF). Computer Gaming World . No. 47. pp. 42–43. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 3, 2025.
  34. ↑ Lesser, Hartley; Lesser, Patricia; Lesser, Kirk (April 1988). "The Role of Computers". Dragon. No. 132. p. 84.
  35. ↑ "Computer Entertainer". Computer Entertainer. Vol. 7, no. 4. July 1988. p. 9.
  36. ↑ Halfhill, Tom R. (June 1990). "Shove It!". Game Player's. Vol. 2, no. 6. pp. 45–46.
  37. ↑ Halfhill, Tom R. (June 1990). "Boxxle". Game Player's. Vol. 2, no. 6. p. 90.
  38. ↑ Halfhill, Tom R. (December 1990). "Boxy Boy". Game Player's. Vol. 2, no. 12. p. 90.
  39. ↑ Marçal Mora Cantallops (2023). Rompecabezas: Cinco décadas de videojuegos y puzles (in Spanish). Héroes De Papel. ISBN   978-84-947149-3-1. la web está llena de múltiples clones de Sokoban[the web is full of multiple Sokoban clones]
  40. ↑ Austin Barr; Calvin Chung; Aaron Williams (2021). Block Dude Puzzles are NP-Hard (and the Rugs Really Tie the Reductions Together) (PDF). CCCG (2021). p. 1.
  41. ↑ Petr Jarusek; Radek Pelánek (2010). "Difficulty Rating of Sokoban Puzzle" (PDF). Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications. 222: 140–150. doi:10.3233/978-1-60750-676-8-140. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 30, 2025. There is a very large number of levels of the puzzle freely available on the Internet. These available levels span wide range of difficulty.
  42. ↑ Several efficient Sokoban solvers aim to find short, but not necessarily optimal, solutions, including JSoko, YASS, and Takaken. Balyo, Tomáš; Froleyks, Nils (2022). "AI Assisted Design of Sokoban Puzzles Using Automated Planning". In Wölfel, Matthias; Bernhardt, Johannes; Thiel, Sonja (eds.). ArtsIT, Interactivity and Game Creation. Springer. pp. 429–430. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-95531-1_29. ISBN   978-3-030-95531-1.
  43. ↑ Austin Barr; Calvin Chung; Aaron Williams (2021). Block Dude Puzzles are NP-Hard (and the Rugs Really Tie the Reductions Together) (PDF). CCCG (2021). p. 1. There are over 100 publications with "Sokoban" or "倉庫番" in the title, ranging from artificial intelligence solvers and optimizers, to level generation
  44. ↑ "Picoban". April 11, 2018. Archived from the original on August 1, 2025. Retrieved August 1, 2025. Picoban is a sokoban-style puzzle game [...] the red orbs need to be moved onto buttons and that keys need to be collected before you can make it to the green teleport stone.
  45. ↑ Ziwen Liu; Yang Chao (2017). "The Non-Deterministic Constraint Logic and Its Applications in Computational Complexity" (PDF). Computer Science and Application (in Chinese). 7 (5). Hans Publishers: 408–409. doi:10.12677/csa.2017.75049. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 4, 2025. Retrieved June 4, 2025. 种豆游戏(Beanstalk)是 Braingle.com 网站开发的一个在线小游戏[...].种豆游戏是在一个由一些墙体围成的二维的格子迷宫中, 控制游戏中的一个人上下左右移动, 并且推动游戏中的四种物品: 铲子、种子、化肥、浇水壶, 在迷宫中标记 X 的目标格子中完成种豆.标记 X的格子和空地一样, 人可以自由通过.要完成种豆, 须做四步, 即按顺序把铲子、种子、化肥、浇水壶依次推到目标格子.和经典的推箱子一样, 人一次只能推动一个物品.[Beanstalk is an online minigame developed by Braingle.com [...]. In Beanstalk, players control a character that can move up, down, left, or right within a two-dimensional square maze surrounded by walls. The goal is to push four types of items—shovel, seed, fertilizer, and watering can—into a single target square marked with an "X" to complete the bean-planting process. The square marked with an "X" function like an empty space that allows the player to move through it freely. To successfully plant the bean, players must complete four steps in sequence: pushing the shovel, seed, fertilizer, and watering can into the target square one after another. Similar to the classic Sokoban game, the player can only push one item at a time.]
  46. ↑ Zubaran, Tadeu; Ritt, Marcus (2011). Agent motion planning with pull and push moves (PDF). 8th National Meeting on Artificial Intelligence (ENIAC 2011). Sociedade Brasileira de Computação. pp. 358–369. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 16, 2024. Retrieved June 16, 2025. Pukoban is a game on an integer grid [...] The agent can push or pull a box one cell horizontally or vertically if the destination cell is free and he has enough space to do so.
  47. ↑ Aymeric du Peloux (September 4, 2021). "Multicosmos". Archived from the original on June 16, 2025. I'm creating some new levels with two wharehousemen. Above, I illustrate a level where, to be solved, a penguin and a bear have to play alternately in cooperation. It's inspired of the Sokoban game of course
  48. ↑ David W. Skinner. "Hexoban". Archived from the original on April 3, 2002. Using hexagons, instead of squares as in standard Sokoban, offers a new realm of possibilities.
  49. ↑ Alfred Pfeiffer. "Multiban". Archived from the original on March 9, 2005. the idea of the well known Sokoban game is extended to mazes that contain (often also require) more than one pusher.
  50. ↑ "Sokoban Limit" . Retrieved August 18, 2025. This Sokoban game has a very strict moves limit
  51. ↑ "Sokoban reverse mode".
  52. ↑ Michael Fryers; Michael Greene (1995). "Sokoban" (PDF). Eureka (54): 25–32. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 5, 2024.
  53. ↑ Dorit Dor; Uri Zwick (1999). "SOKOBAN and other motion planning problems". Computational Geometry . 13 (4): 215–228. doi: 10.1016/S0925-7721(99)00017-6 .
  54. ↑ Joseph C. Culberson (1997). "Sokoban is PSPACE-complete" (PDF). Technical Report TR 97-02, Dept. Of Computing Science, University of Alberta. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 28, 2024.
  55. ↑ Robert Aubrey Hearn (2006). Games, Puzzles, and Computation (PDF) (PhD thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. pp. 98–100.
  56. ↑ Andreas Junghanns; Jonathan Schaeffer (2001). "Sokoban: Improving the Search with Relevance Cuts" (PDF). Theoretical Computer Science. 252 (1–2): 5. doi: 10.1016/S0304-3975(00)00080-3 .
  57. ↑ Yaron Shoham (2020). "FESS Draft" (PDF). p. 3.
  58. ↑ David Holland; Yaron Shoham. "Theoretical analysis on Picokosmos 17". Archived from the original on June 7, 2016.
  59. ↑ Timo Virkkala (2011). Solving Sokoban (PDF) (MSc thesis). University of Helsinki. p. 1.
  60. ↑ Andreas Junghanns (1999). Pushing the Limits: New Developments in Single-Agent Search (PhD thesis). University of Alberta. doi: 10.7939/R3W95103S .
  61. ↑ Andreas Junghanns; Jonathan Schaeffer (2001). "Sokoban: Enhancing general single-agent search methods using domain knowledge". Artificial Intelligence. 129 (1–2): 219–251. doi: 10.1016/S0004-3702(01)00109-6 .
  62. ↑ Yaron Shoham; Jonathan Shaeffer (2020). The FESS Algorithm: A Feature Based Approach to Single-Agent Search (PDF). 2020 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG). Osaka, Japan: IEEE. doi:10.1109/CoG47356.2020.9231929.
  63. ↑ Yaron Shoham (2020). "FESS presentation at the CoG conference (17.5 minutes)" (video). archive.org.
  64. ↑ Petr Jarusek; Radek Pelánek (2010). "Difficulty Rating of Sokoban Puzzle" (PDF). Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications. 222: 140–150. doi:10.3233/978-1-60750-676-8-140. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 30, 2025. There exist small instances that can be quickly solved by computer (using a trivial brute force algorithm) but take humans hours to solve. At the same time, there are also instances of the puzzle, which humans can solve but which are beyond capabilities of [...] artificial intelligence solvers.
  65. ↑ "Let's Logic Bots Statistics" (PDF). Retrieved October 6, 2024.
  66. ↑ "Sokoban Solver Statistics - Large Test Suite" . Retrieved April 14, 2024.
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