Psychoban review

This is a box-pushing puzzle game with a theme based around a lobotomized prisoner following the command of an evil professor and his assistant. You run from location to location pushing boxes and finding ways to place the boxes on specific spots and move to the next level. Your progress is tracked by Openfeint for high score recording. This app is from Dedalord and is available for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad for $2.99. This app also has a free ‘Lite’ version.

Let’s begin our testing with the story. The story is simple and well told in nice short sessions. The dialog is well done and the premise is absolutely insane. You travel around pushing boxes onto glowing squares. The game works at a 45 degree angled view of a room with a square grid system. You touch boxes to move them turn-based strategy game style. Your character will automatically move to push the box if possible and the puzzles go from tutorial level to mind bending challenges with great touches of brilliance and planning among the rare unfairly hard puzzles.

The art is unique. The character portraits stand out immediately and really show a dark detailed direction of the game. The main character has absolutely great animations with funny stand-by animations (when you leave your character alone for a while). The 3D is alright, but there are noticeable seams in the curvatures of the walls, the doorways look noticeably cheap in execution, and the rest of the game is set in 2D, so it gives a Ragnarok Online feel to the game. These days, stretching textures are unforgivable and lazy, but somehow, I suspect its part of the crazy insanity of this game’s theme.

The sound is forgettable, but there are the random ambient noises that do a wonderful job of putting some paranoia and creepy vibes into you. Most of the time, the level is silent and you hear random noises that are really quite haunting after a while, especially with the Portal style wall scratches, blood, and awesome posters on the walls. It’s a wonderful touch and a really effective reference to Apature Science.

Solid gameplay with great puzzles, crazy sound effects, really lovely graphics (with noticeable sloppy texturing… though I’m still not sure if that was on purpose or not), and interesting and engaging storylines. I can’t say that this game is perfect, but the insanity of it all is that I can’t say it isn’t.

For some reason, this game is just fun. The undo-button really helps of course, but the art is so distinctive. Great game. Too fun. Almost… dare I say… insanely fun? Yes, the corners are clipping and the boxes are my friend. Boxes? Cubes more like it you can almost say… they are my ‘companion’ cubes… Where are the incinerators?! The cameras are always watching!!!

(Two days after this review was written and submitted, Joseph was spotted at a Toys R’ Us staring at Rubiks cubes. He was never seen again… until he reviews ‘Entombed’, another puzzle game with more boxy floors and 3D environments.)

Here is a video demo of the Psychoban app on the iPhone

AppSafari Rating: 5/5

AppSafari review of Psychoban was written by Joseph Ho on August 6th, 2010 and categorized under App Store, Featured, Games, Puzzler, Universal. Page viewed 7120 times, 1 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.