‘Patrick’s Parabox’ – Dizzying Puzzles of Boxes in Boxes

Patrick’s Parabox sees you pushing boxes into other boxes, squeezing them into larger and smaller realities that interconnect with one another.

In this game, you control a little box that you move around, and there are other boxes you can shove into new positions. Some boxes contain their own internal layouts, though, and if you push a box into it, you’ll squeeze inside. If you move your box inside, this new layout then becomes your reality, spreading out around you. Here, you can push further boxes in and out of here to continue to shape the various boxes that you are residing inside. It’s in working with the connections between these boxes that the game gets complicated. And it can get complicated FAST.

That complexity can come from the boxes sometimes containing the world you’re inhabiting at the time. Take the above screenshot as an example. You’re simultaneously inside of two boxes at once, as the box inside the level also contains the level. This means your actions can take place in two realities at once, affecting both depending on what you do. These layers can get far deeper than this the further you get in the game, resulting in all sorts of things happening as you squish and grow blocks based on where you push them. I’ve often found myself dizzyingly lost and having to take a few moments to gather my thoughts when, technically, I’ve just moved some boxes around. It’s the connections between these layers/realities that make the game so confounding, yet so difficult to walk away from. It’s honestly fun just to push things and see what happens, sometimes.

Patrick’s Parabox is a wild puzzle game that will definitely have you scratching your head often as you try to figure out the logic of something you’ve just done. However, it’s constantly pleasing to just see how all of these block worlds affect one another as you try to figure out those puzzles.

Patrick’s Parabox is available now on itch.io and Steam.

About The Author

Joel Couture

Joel has been covering indie games for various sites including IndieGames.com, Siliconera, Gamasutra, Warp Door, CG Magazine, and more over the past seven years, and has written book-length studies on Undertale and P.T.. Joel is constantly on the lookout for digital experiences that push the boundaries of what games can be, and seeks to delve into the creative process, meanings, and emotion labor that goes into the work of artists worldwide.

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