Puzzling

Puzzling is composed of a few simple rules, extending from the original Sokoban game. To my playthrough, I found the pressure sensitive toggles on the ground which toggle when the player steps on them the most fruitful. All of them must be activated for the level to be able to be completed. They're a key mechanic, with their color change surprisingly(and satisfyingly) alerting you to their presence in the first level. Despite this, it’s quite possible to finish the first level without noting their necessity, thinking they are just part of the path to possibly travel through or just walking through them by accident. When you get to the next levels though, their necessity becomes clear and rather exciting, as you need to consider not only how to access them in the first place, but also how to maneuver yourself to properly activate them.

As the player, it can be easy to focus on the basic Sokoban mechanic or the golden items you must collect, but these toggles are always there. They don’t let you forget that with them changing color as you casually maneuver crates over and past them. Things get more complicated as multiple are introduced and you want to deal with them right away, but that may not always be an option. 

Generally they don’t add too much of a challenge though, but they help give you another goal or stepping stone to work towards. It is pleasantly frustrating if they change back to the unactivated color when you’re positioning crates as you know you’ll likely just need to visit them again after the positioning is done.

To expand on the capability, the paths could be used more so in combination with positioning of the crates, so once a crate is in place, you cannot toggle a path if you haven’t already, so you need to consider order of the toggles perhaps even before or interspersed with the crate positioning.

In this game, there were multiple types of new rules added to the Sokoban game. First is the blue ground that toggles to green once the player step on it, and they must all turn green to win the game. The second rule is the coins that the player must collect to win the game. The designer added these two rules into the basic Sokoban rules so that the player must consider other mechanics while solving the crate puzzles. The new rules increased the potential of the game to make more difficult puzzles. 

I'll describe my experience playing the last level of the game as an example for further comments. This last level has a scene of the princess Peach locked inside the walls and requires Mario to rescue. The level at first seems easy because it doesn't have that many tiles. However, after a few moves, I found that I went into a dead end. I tried to push the box on the right out, but it will just stuck the box on the left. Then I found out that if I push the box on the left up one tile, I can go around and free the right box. After I found this strategy, I made a few more tries and beat the level. The design of this level is able to let the player make some wrong choices and stuck at the beginning, but isn't to difficult to make the experience frustrated. However, the new rules outside of Sokoban rules are weakly incorporated in this level. The floors that toggles from blue to green can be also toggled when the player is walking against the wall. So I don't really have to consider this new mechanic to solve the puzzle.