Sokoball of Osaka

Sokoball of Osaka: A Game Of Forethought And Strategic Design is a Sokoban variant with an enhanced ruleset. While pushing the boxes still remains the main playing mechanic, the objective is to clear the board by dropping every box down an "exit shaft". The game adds many obstacles and hazards that the player must be aware of, such as single-use touchplates that may lower or raise fences on certain tiles, holes in the floor where both boxes and the player character itself may drop, and sliding tiles that disappear after being walked on, making entire sections of the board slide in a certain direction (depending on where the player stepped off from such a tile), thus reconfiguring the playing field on the go. Additionally, certain tiles only allow movement in one direction (indicated by an arrow). All these elements make the puzzles notably more complex compared to the standard Sokoban rules.

The player's alter ego on the board is a yellow ball (likely unrelated to Pac-Man), which explains the "ball" part in the game title. There is no story whatsoever behind what is going on in the game, making Sokoball a rather abstract puzzle. The game has neither a time limit nor a move counter, and the included puzzles may be played in any order. However, most mistakes made by the player will likely result in an unwinnable situation, forcing to restart the level. The demo mode shows a sample puzzle being solved so that players may familiarise themselves with the rules.

Sokoball was distributed as shareware, with the registered users getting access to all features of the built-in level editor. The unregistered shareware version allows to create and save user levels, but these can only contain traditional Sokoban elements: boxes, walls, pits and exit shafts.