BoxWorld (MacOS X)

BoxWorld is a puzzle game, where the player have to place boxes over special places in order to gain energy for teleport to the next level. If the player gets stuck by placing boxes in unappropriate places, he can retry the current stage, by pressing the R key, but this will cost a life. If all the lives are exhausted - the game is over. The boxes can be only pushed, but not pulled, thus requiring ordering of the boxes with caution. The game idea dates back to 1980s. Addictive gameplay made it widespread all over the world. The presented here game features nice graphics, enjoyable music and 525 mindboggling levels for completion. Because the stages are so many and hard to be completed in a single session, the progress can be saved with the press of the S key on the keyboard, which later can be loaded with the L key. The Space key teleports to the next puzzle, but only if the current puzzle was already completed in previous game. There is no chronometer for the level, so the player can relax and think on the level, before pushing, without the pressure of external factors, except the world itself. With the progress of the game, the puzzles are getting harder and harder. The player have to come up with more complex strategies on the later levels, with much more pushes and special tricks in order to place the boxes in corners or long corridors. Sometime, most of the boxes are already placed in the appropriate area, but the player have to replace all the boxes just to be able to move another box and arrange it where it belongs. The version presented here was compiled, built and tested entirely on PowerBook G4 (667 MHz with 768 MB RAM) with MacOS X 10.4.11 and Xcode V2.5, but it shall work on any other MacOS X capable Mac computer with at least Tiger installed. It is provided as Universal Binary for Intel and PPC machines.

The game rules of the classic puzzle game are renewed with the addition of two new types of boxes, which behave much different than the normal boxes seen at most of the stages. The IceBox can be pushed normally, but once it is moved, it slides away, until it is stops, hit by another object or wall. This requires extra effort to be made, when placing these boxes at the appropriate areas. The other special box type is the InertBox. This box does not have to be placed over special place and it does not change over there. In some levels the solution can not be seen at first because of these boxes, but sometime there is an area hidden under them, where the player have to place the ordinary boxes. They can also be used as stoppers for the IceBoxes. At some levels they are just an obstacle which needs to simply be put away, then the player can focus on the normal puzzle solution. These new types of boxes raise the possibility for different puzzles exponentially. The additional box types need special treatment, thus the puzzles with them are much harder to solve.

Another addition to the game, is the rough terrain, where the player can walk, but boxes can not be pushed over it. It will also stop the IceBox. With this terrain in mind, the possibility for pretty easy or very difficult puzzles raises even more. The fun of the game raises too. The player can be controlled with the use of joystick or keyboard. For better retro gaming experience, the use of analog joystick is recommended. Plugging joystick in the USB port of the computer, before start of the game, will make it working straight away. To switch between window and full screen mode of the graphics, press the Enter key. The game window is fully resizable, so BoxWorld can be played in any resolution or dimension.
For these later versions, I have rewritten the game with portability in mind. To work on MacOS X, the SDL and SDL_mixer frameworks are required to be installed in the /Library/Frameworks folder. These frameworks are available for download from the Simple DirectMedia Layer site. Thanks to the SDL library, the game became easily portable and is also available for Amiga and Windows. The game is set as a sequel of MazezaM and have its own sequel in the form of BoxWorld 2. For everyone who loves puzzles, BoxWorld is nice addition to his software collection.

Download BoxWorld (v1.14) for MacOS X
Download BoxWorld (v1.13) for MacOS X

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