Loading ...
ARCADE
Sockman Review: I've Played Better Platformers on a Commodore 64, And I'm Not Even Joking
A 64-year-old plumber named Domin finds a sock and apparently that's enough plot to justify dying 200 times per minute in a single-screen platformer that thinks difficulty equals quality. Spoiler: it doesn't.
Paul
February 3, 2026
4.5
Overall Score
"Sockman wants desperately to be the second coming of Manic Miner and Rick Dangerous, but it forgot that those games were impressive because of what they accomplished within severe limitations, not because dying repeatedly is inherently fun."
First Impressions (Or: When Nostalgia Becomes a Trap)
Look, I get it. You're a developer, you grew up on the classics, and you want to recapture that magic. But here's the thing about Sockman: it mistakes punishing difficulty for good game design, which is like mistaking a headache for deep thought. The premise is aggressively weird â a 64-year-old plumber named Domin Dominguez encounters a sock on retirement eve and becomes Sockman, a hero who jumps and dies, mostly dies. The game wears its Rick Dangerous and Manic Miner influences like a badge of honor, but those games were difficult because of hardware limitations and game design infancy. We've learned things since 1983. Apparently Sockware missed that memo. Within thirty seconds, I'd died four times to obstacles I couldn't have possibly predicted. The game calls this hardcore. I call it lazy level design masquerading as challenge. And yes, I'm old enough to have actually played these classics on original hardware, so don't come at me with 'you just don't understand retro difficulty.'
The Gameplay Loop: Jump, Die, Respawn, Regret
Sockman offers exactly two actions: jump and move left or right. That's it. No attacks, no power-ups, no bagpipes (the game specifically mentions this, which is somehow both the funniest and saddest detail). The single-screen platformer format could work â Jumpman proved that decades ago â but those games had readable patterns and fair challenges. Here, you're expected to memorize death traps through sheer repetition. Die to the thing, learn it's there, avoid it next time, die to the next thing. Rinse, repeat, wonder why you're not just playing Celeste which does difficult platforming with actual respect for your time. The controls are responsive enough, I'll give it that. When Sockman jumps, he jumps. When he dies â and oh, he will die â it's technically your fault, even if the game designed the level specifically to murder you. The problem isn't execution, it's that the core loop never evolves beyond trial-and-error memorization. I've played Flash games with more mechanical depth.
Visuals and Audio: Retro Without the Soul
The pixel art does its job in that 'yes, this looks like a ZX Spectrum game' way, but there's a difference between homage and generic retro aesthetic. Games like Shovel Knight understood this â they captured the feeling of NES-era graphics while adding modern polish and personality. Sockman just looks... old. Not charmingly old, not nostalgically old, just old. Domin himself is a collection of pixels that might be a plumber in underwear with a sock on his head, or might be a collection of pixels. Hard to tell, harder to care. The animations are minimal, which is period-appropriate, but when the game promises 'a thousand different and heartbreaking ways to die,' I expected at least some variety in how Sockman eats it. Nope. Same crumple, different context. The audio is what happens when you make beeps and boops without understanding why Manic Miner's music was actually catchy. It's there. It makes sounds. That's about all I can say. My speakers didn't catch fire, so I guess that's a technical achievement.
The Difficulty Problem (Or: Hard For Hard's Sake)
Let's talk about what Sockware clearly wants to talk about: difficulty. The game description literally says it's 'even more difficult than sucking your own elbow,' which is trying very hard to be quirky and mostly just being weird. Here's my issue â I love difficult games. I've beaten Super Meat Boy. I've suffered through I Wanna Be The Guy. I respect a good challenge. But difficulty needs purpose. It needs to teach you something, reward mastery, make you feel accomplished. Sockman just kills you over and over with gotcha moments until you memorize the pattern. That's not difficulty, that's a memory test with extra steps. The game brags about 200 deaths per minute, and yeah, that's achievable if you're trying to speedrun or just mashing buttons in frustration. But compare this to something like Celeste or even the original Prince of Persia it claims to be inspired by â those games were hard but fair. Every death felt like a lesson. Here, every death feels like the game saying 'gotcha!' and giggling.
What Works (Reluctantly Admitted)
Fine. FINE. There are moments where Sockman almost gets it right. The single-screen format does create some genuinely clever puzzle-platforming situations where you need to figure out the correct sequence of jumps. When the level design focuses on spatial reasoning rather than cheap deaths, there's a glimmer of the classics it's trying to emulate. The respawn is instant, which at least shows the developer understood that if you're going to kill players constantly, you can't make them wait. And the weird humor in the description â the stuff about Domin not liking his nickname Sockman, the oddly specific list of items he doesn't use â suggests there's actual personality buried in here somewhere. I wish more of that had made it into the actual game. Also, it runs. On my machine, on presumably any machine made after 1995. That's something, I guess. The controls don't fight you, which means when you die, it's the level design's fault, not technical incompetence. That's almost a compliment.
What This Game Needs (Besides a Time Machine)
Here's what kills me about Sockman: the foundation for something decent exists here. Take the single-screen format, add actual progression, create levels that challenge spatial reasoning instead of memorization, give Domin some personality beyond 'grumpy old man who dies a lot,' and you'd have something. Instead, we get a game that thinks referencing Rick Dangerous is enough. It's not. Those games were products of their time, limited by technology and primitive game design theory. We've learned so much since then about fair difficulty curves, readable visual language, reward structures that keep players engaged. Sockman ignores all of it in favor of 'remember this old thing? Here it is again, but worse.' The game needs checkpoints, or level variety, or mechanics that evolve, or literally anything beyond jump-and-die. Give me a reason to care about Domin beyond 'he's old and found a sock.' Let me unlock new abilities, or areas, or at minimum some cosmetic rewards for suffering through this. As it stands, Sockman is a love letter to an era that didn't know better, written by someone who should.
Rating Breakdown
Quality
4.5
Functional enough to torture you repeatedly, which I suppose counts as working as intended, though the collision detection feels like it was coded during a lunch break.
Innovation
3.2
Calling yourself inspired by Rick Dangerous and Manic Miner isn't innovation, it's just admitting you watched a YouTube retrospective and thought 'I could do that' â the last truly innovative platformer was probably Cave Story in 2004.
Value
5.8
It's free or cheap enough that you won't demand a refund, but your time is worth more than getting intimate with the same death animation for the hundredth time.
Gameplay
4.1
The core loop is jump, die, respawn, die differently, question your life choices â I lasted twenty minutes before alt-tabbing to check if Rick Dangerous had a modern port.
Audio/Visual
5.5
Retro pixel art that looks appropriately old-school but lacks the charm that made those ZX Spectrum games memorable, and the sound effects are about as exciting as listening to dial-up internet.
Replayability
3.7
Once you've died in all thousand heartbreaking ways, there's literally nothing left except the hollow realization that you could have been replaying actual Manic Miner instead.
What Didn't Annoy Me
Instant respawns mean you can experience failure at maximum efficiency
Controls are responsive enough that your deaths are your own fault, which is something I suppose
The single-screen format occasionally produces a clever spatial puzzle buried under the frustration
Runs without crashing, which is more than I can say for some indie platformers
The description's weird humor about bagpipes and elbow-sucking at least made me chuckle once
What Made Me Sigh
Mistakes memorization-based difficulty for actual game design challenge
Visually generic retro aesthetic without the charm that made those old games memorable
Zero mechanical evolution â you jump and die the same way in screen fifty as screen one
The premise promises personality but delivers pixel-man dies repeatedly the game
Literally just a worse version of games you could play right now on emulators
Final Verdict
Sockman wants desperately to be the second coming of Manic Miner and Rick Dangerous, but it forgot that those games were impressive because of what they accomplished within severe limitations, not because dying repeatedly is inherently fun. This is a functional single-screen platformer that does exactly what it sets out to do, which is punish you for having the audacity to press the jump button. If you're the specific type of masochist who thinks 'games are too easy now' and genuinely miss ZX Spectrum-era trial-and-error design, you might squeeze some enjoyment out of this. Everyone else should just play Celeste, or Cave Story, or literally any modern platformer that learned something from the past forty years of game design. Domin deserves better than this sock-based retirement plan, and so do you.
Sockman
Tags
platformer
hardcore
retro
single-screen
difficult
arcade
pixel-art
nostalgia-bait
Are you a developer and want to remove this review?