Sokobond

Sokobond is a Sokoban-style puzzle video game themed around creating chemical compounds from atoms. In each level, the player is presented with a 2D grid containing walls and atoms. The player controls one of the atoms, and moves it around the level. Moving atoms next to each other bonds them, and the two atoms then move together as a compound. There are five elements introduced: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and helium, able to form four, three, two, one, and zero bonds respectively.

There are a total of 105 levels, grouped into sections with themed challenges. Mechanics introduced in later sections include introducing objects that can remove bonds, increase the order of a bond, or rearrange bonded molecules.

Sokobond was created by independent developers Alan Hazelden and Harry Lee. The game's music was composed by Allison Walker. The game was released on Linux, OS X, Windows-based personal computers on 27 August 2013. The game was later released on the digital distribution service Steam, after being greenlit by the community.

On 2 September 2021, the game was released on Nintendo Switch. It was ported to iOS and Android on 19 May 2022.

Sokobond received "generally favorable" reviews from professional critics according to review aggregator website Metacritic.

Reviewers generally praised its chemistry theming as aiding in grasping the game's abstractions, without requiring the player to understand chemistry. They also praised Sokobond's minimalism, both in terms of visual design and level design. Eurogamer appreciated that the game added difficulty without increasing the number of elements in a level. Killscreen commented that the game managed to reuse its few elements in many intriguing ways. Destructoid found that the simplicity of the art and sound direction elegantly mirrored the simplicity of the gameplay.

Sokobond Express, a mashup of Sokobond and Alan Hazelden's Cosmic Express, was developed by Venezuelan developer José Hernández. Unlike Sokobond, the play area is not bound by the boundaries, and unlike Cosmic Express, orientation does not matter. An expansion of a previously idea by Hernandez, Subatomic Wire, previously published on itch.io in 2020, the idea was picked up for publishing as a game by Draknek. The game was announced on 27 July 2021, and released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux on 22 February 2024.

Sokobond Express received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Edge praised the gameplay, audio, and sound design of the game, considering the game to be a "precise and expertly measured combination" of the other two games.