Ludography
88/100
Players12 ratings
84/100
Metacritic9 critic reviews
More scores
Metacritic usersuser score
85/100
GameFAQsTough-Unforgiving
4.25/5
Player reviews
99% positive5,019 reviews
Steam Deck
Playable
Runs on
Windows, Mac, Linux
Price
US$19.99

Where to get it

Patrick's Parabox cover

2022 · Adventure · Arcade

Patrick's Parabox

A mind-bending recursive puzzle game about boxes within boxes within boxes within boxes. Learn to use infinity to your advantage as you explore a deep and elegant system.

Released
29 March 2022
Platforms
LinuxNintendo SwitchPlayStation 5WindowsmacOS
Genres
AdventureArcadeIndiePuzzleStrategy
Developers
—
Publishers
—
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
Bird view / Isometric
Themes
Educational
Country
United States
Age ratings
PEGI 3ESRB EGRAC ALL
Languages
Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish (Spain)
Time to beat
6.5hmain story17hcompletionist

About

Patrick's Parabox is a puzzle video game created by indie developer Patrick Traynor. Originating as a short demo built in 2020, the game was expanded and released on 29 March 2022 for PC, followed by a release on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 on 26 July 2023. The game centers around playing with infinity and recursion by pushing boxes into and out of other boxes, sometimes in and out of itself, in order to finish the level by putting boxes into their spaces.

Players say

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

In each level, the player is presented with a puzzle containing boxes and marked spaces. One of the boxes represents the player and it can be controlled. Movement in the game is Sokoban-like where the player moves and pushes boxes around. In addition to this, the player can also enter and exit boxes.

If a box is pushed into another box that has an opening on its edge, the box will shrink to fit inside. Conversely, if a box is pushed towards an open edge of the box it is currently in, it will grow and move outside of the box. In some levels, it is possible for a box to contain itself leading to recursion. Because of this, there are ways to create a paradox, such as pushing a box outside of itself.

Development

The idea for the game first came to Traynor when he was part of the game development club at UC San Diego. It started as a Sokoban-like stealth game with a co-op mechanic where one player can push blocks around while the other player is shrunken-down and can move inside the blocks. Traynor picked up this idea four years later and decided to code it up for any number of layers as a programming challenge. The core concepts of the game were inspired by juner's Sokosoko on itch.io. During development, the game lent itself to a "traditional puzzle game format", where each puzzle introduces a new concept and builds upon previous concepts.

The game was developed with Unity. The graphics and animations of the game were designed by Traynor, and the music was composed by Priscilla Snow.

Reception

Patrick's Parabox won the "Developer Choice" award at the 2019 IndieCade Festival. It also won the "Excellence in Design" award at the 2020 IGF Awards. According to review aggregator website Metacritic, it received "generally favorable" reviews.

Eurogamer writer Edward Hawkes said that the game was "morish, and captivating and never monotonous" and Katharine Castle of Rock, Paper, Shotgun described it as an "infinitely pleasing puzzle game." The game also received positive reviews on PCGamer and Kotaku.

Awards

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Linux29 March 2022Worldwide
macOS29 March 2022Worldwide
Windows29 March 2022Worldwide
Nintendo Switch26 July 2023Worldwide
PlayStation 526 July 2023Worldwide

Games like this

Collections2 collections

Years

Genres

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.