I maintain that I am not really a fan of sokoban type puzzle games, and yet somehow, I seem to enjoy them. Perhaps it’s just when there are crate-pushing puzzles in otherwise crate-push-free games that I don’t like?
In any case, A Monster’s Expedition was one of the ones I did enjoy. You are a monster, who navigates islands which seem to make up a sort of Museum of Humans, as there are many artefacts (sometimes amusingly mislabelled as to their purpose) to be found. The game, however, isn’t about finding the artefacts – it’s about finding a way to leave the islands completely.
To do that you have to reach a ferry, and to reach the ferry you have to complete crate-pushing puzzles on each island in order to open paths, build log bridges, or make rafts to get around. Of course, they’re not crates you have to push: they’re trees.
You can chop down trees, then push the trunks as logs. If you push them sideways, they roll until they hit something or fall in the water, and if you push them lengthways they flip up on end and then over onto their side again. These, plus the double-height trees and some rocks, make up the majority of the puzzles and they’re all about trying to get logs into certain positions on each island to progress.
It’s simple, although many of the puzzles are not. Later on, you discover a few meta-puzzles, where there’s a collection of islands to solve, but not just to allow you to move between them – you have to make way for a log that needs to traverse the islands and bridges you’ve made too, which may mean the solution you had originally may not be enough for the log as well.
A Monster’s Expedition is a nice little (well, not little – it’s bloody huge) brain-scratcher, with a bit of humour and some fiendish puzzles. Oh, and if you’ve bought the itch.io Palestinian Relief bundle, you already own it!
