Shove It! The Warehouse Game

"Well, for what it's worth..."

... it's alright. What's to be understood about Shove It! is that it is one of the first representations of this type of puzzler to hit the States market, and is still one of the few versions of Sokoban on a console, but the market has, since then, been completely saturated with games of this nature, that this game is almost an obsolete version. If the name Sokoban is not familiar, a description of the concept will help players realize that they've played this before.

Shove It! follows a burly warehouse worker, whose aspiration is to earn enough money to buy an expensive car and impress the ladies. What must this worker do? Move boxes.

The worker is placed in a special grid, and there are only a few different types of blocks: movable crates, locations for crates, and barriers. Crates can only be pushed, not pulled, and only one at a time. The object of each stage is to move each crate to one of the designates spots where crates must be placed. When this is complete, the worker progresses. There is a multitude of stages, grouped in clusters of ten apiece.

For what the game is, it can provide quite a challenge for even the most seasoned puzzler. The later stages in the game are surprisingly perplexing. What impresses me about games of this type is that every stage, no matter which number it is, looks deceivingly simple. The gamer confidently proclaims, "Oh, I can do that!" However, with a few box pushes, a box is in a corner, or a box is trapped. This rarely leads to frustration, but simply confusion. The thought that every stage is solvable is a consolation.

A password is given for every ten stages beaten, so a player can turn the console off and return, put in the easily memorized password, and continue playing.

This game makes for a mysteriously ingenious puzzle design, but the way the game is presented is quite primitive, even for its time. The graphics are surprisingly basic. There is a title screen animation, but that is the only graphical standpoint that has detail. All that is required, granted, is a sprite of the warehouse worker, the barriers, the crates, and the crates placed, but these are rather bland. There is a slight change of color and sprite scheme for every ten levels, but that is about it. No cutscene or congratulations screen at the end of a stage.

It is convenient that the "A" button takes away one move, but in a cluster of ten, it is impossible to be told which stages of the ten have been completed, and which must still be done. A player can forget which stages are already completed when a stage has been worked on for five minutes.

There are only two songs in the entire game. One song is reserved for the Start Screen and its menus, and the same song is repeated constantly in the stages. Not only is it disappointing that there is only one song, but this song is rather grating on its own. Even Super Mario Bros. had a few songs in its soundtrack.

The game design is probably familiar now. Sokoban, BoxDude, Boxxle, Pocoman, and so on can be played via Java or can be downloaded in a snap. Shove It! makes for a good addition to the Genesis library, for those who are interested in puzzlers, but beside its historical purpose, this game can be found elsewhere in a matter of minutes.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/09/05, Updated 12/01/05