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PUZZLE
Sokoban Dragon Review: I Pushed 25 Boxes and All I Got Was This Lousy Headache
Levi Kornelsen's Sokoban Dragon is exactly what it says on the tin: Sokoban puzzles with a dragon sprite. If you've played literally any block-pushing game in the last 40 years, congratulations—you've already played this one.
Paul
February 14, 2026
5.2
Overall Score
"Sokoban Dragon is a competent collection of classic puzzles wearing a dragon costume to a party where everyone's already seen the costume before."
First Impressions (Or: When 'Cute Dragon' Is Your Entire Marketing Strategy)
Look, I've been reviewing games since before half of you discovered what itch.io was, and I can spot a reskin from a mile away. Sokoban Dragon opens with a title screen—groundbreaking—and immediately throws you into a tutorial room that teaches you to push boxes. If you need a tutorial for Sokoban in 2024, I genuinely don't know what to tell you. The 'cute dragon' sprite is fine, I guess, in that aggressively inoffensive way that screams 'I grabbed some free assets and called it a day.' The developer openly admits these are adapted puzzles from David W. Skinner's Microban set and recolored tiles from Sodacoma's Awakening collection. At least there's transparency here—this is a compilation album, not an original composition. I loaded it up expecting literally nothing, and somehow I still felt a twinge of disappointment when I realized this was going to be an hour of the same block-pushing I've been doing since the Reagan administration.
The Gameplay Loop (AKA: Push Box, Undo 47 Times, Repeat)
Here's the thing about Sokoban: it's an inherently solid puzzle design that's been perfected over four decades. You push boxes onto targets. You can't pull them. You can paint yourself into a corner in approximately three seconds if you're not paying attention. Sokoban Dragon doesn't reinvent this wheel—it doesn't even repaint it. The 25 puzzles here range from 'I solved this while yawning' to 'okay, I actually had to think for a minute,' which the developer generously describes as a gradual difficulty curve. That curve isn't smooth—it's more like stairs made of uneven rocks—but it exists. The puzzles work because Skinner knew what he was doing when he created Microban. The dragon sprite adds nothing mechanically. It could be a forklift, a sentient cheese wheel, or a depressed accountant, and the gameplay would be identical. I kept playing because Sokoban is fundamentally satisfying, not because this implementation offers anything beyond basic functionality. The undo button works, which is good, because I used it roughly ten thousand times.
Visuals and Audio (Or: The Sound of One Hand Not Clapping)
The visual presentation here is 'adequate' in the way that plain oatmeal is adequate nutrition. We're working with recolored tiles from an existing asset pack, arranged in simple grid patterns that serve their purpose without a shred of personality. The dragon is cute, sure, but it's a static sprite that moves one tile at a time with zero animation. I've seen more emotional range from Excel spreadsheets. The environments are colored boxes on colored floors—there's no theming, no progression of visual ideas, no sense that you're moving through a world. You're just in Puzzle Room 7, then Puzzle Room 8, forever. And the audio? I genuinely don't remember if there was any. I think there might have been some basic sound effects, but they made so little impression that I'd need to load the game again to confirm, and I'm not doing that. When your audio design is so forgettable that a professional reviewer can't recall if sound existed, you've achieved a special kind of nothing. Games from 1991 had more audio personality than this.
What This Game Actually Needs (Besides a Reason to Exist)
If you're going to adapt classic puzzles and charge nothing for them, fine—that's a community service. But give me something, anything, to distinguish this from the seven thousand other Sokoban implementations floating around the internet. Where are the dragon-themed mechanics? Can I breathe fire to mark paths? Can I fly over one tile? Can the dragon hoard the boxes in some thematic way that ties into the puzzle design? No? We're just using a dragon sprite because it's cute? Cool, cool. The difficulty curve could use actual smoothing—some puzzles feel randomly harder than their successors. A hint system would help newcomers without insulting veterans. Maybe some visual flourish when you complete a room, or literally any feedback beyond 'puzzle done, here's the next one.' A level editor would give this actual longevity. Leaderboards for move counts would create competition. Or—and I'm spitballing here—one single original puzzle that isn't from a 20-year-old public puzzle set. I'm not asking for the moon. I'm asking for evidence that this is a game and not a weekend programming exercise.
The One Thing Worth Mentioning (Reluctantly)
I will give Sokoban Dragon this: it's genuinely beginner-friendly, and that's rarer than you'd think. If you've never touched a Sokoban puzzle and want a free, accessible introduction, this does that job without overwhelming you. The early puzzles are simple enough that you'll understand the core concepts, and by puzzle 25, you'll have developed the spatial reasoning skills to tackle harder stuff elsewhere. The developer's transparency about sources is also weirdly refreshing in an ecosystem full of asset flips pretending to be original work. Kornelsen isn't selling you snake oil—they're clear this is a curated collection with borrowed assets. That honesty counts for something in my book, even if the end product is aggressively unremarkable. It runs without bugs, loads quickly, and respects your time by being completable in one sitting. In an era where puzzle games try to trap you with daily challenges and manipulative progression systems, there's something almost quaint about 25 puzzles, an end screen, and nothing else. It's pure, unadulterated Sokoban with a dragon sticker on top.
Rating Breakdown
Quality
6
It works without crashing, which puts it ahead of half the puzzle games on itch.io, but let's not throw a parade for meeting the bare minimum.
Innovation
3
Adapting David W. Skinner's existing Microban puzzles and slapping a dragon on them isn't innovation—it's ctrl+c, ctrl+v with scales.
Value
7
It's free and gives you 25 puzzles that'll occupy an hour or two, which is more generous than my patience for explaining why this isn't revolutionary.
Gameplay
6
The core Sokoban loop is still satisfying because Sokoban has been good since 1982, not because this game does anything new with it.
Audio/Visual
5
Recolored tile sets from someone else's work and zero memorable audio—it's functional in the way hospital waiting rooms are functional.
Replayability
4
Once you've solved these 25 recycled puzzles, there's absolutely nothing calling you back unless you enjoy digital self-flagellation.
What Didn't Annoy Me
Free and transparent about using adapted content—at least nobody's being conned here
Genuinely good for Sokoban beginners who need an accessible entry point without getting demolished
Runs without bugs or performance issues, which is depressingly praiseworthy in 2024
Completable in one sitting without predatory retention mechanics or artificial grinding
The core Sokoban gameplay is still satisfying because that formula worked in 1982 and it works now
What Made Me Sigh
Zero original puzzles—every challenge here is adapted from existing public collections
The dragon theme is purely cosmetic and adds nothing to gameplay or puzzle design
Reused assets with minimal visual personality and audio so forgettable I can't confirm it exists
No replay value, no level editor, no extras—once you're done, you're permanently done
Difficulty curve feels random rather than carefully designed, with spikes that seem arbitrary
Final Verdict
Sokoban Dragon is a competent collection of classic puzzles wearing a dragon costume to a party where everyone's already seen the costume before. If you're new to Sokoban and want a free tutorial, this serves that purpose adequately. If you've played block-pushing games for more than ten minutes in your life, you've already experienced everything this offers. Levi Kornelsen deserves credit for transparency and creating a bug-free experience, but let's be clear: this is a remix album of someone else's hits with a cute album cover. It's fine. It works. It'll occupy an hour. And then you'll forget it existed, just like I'm about to do the moment I finish typing this sentence. If you want actual innovation in puzzle design, look literally anywhere else. If you want 25 free Sokoban puzzles that won't crash, here's your dragon.
Sokoban Dragon
Genre
Puzzle
Developer
Levi Kornelsen
Platform
HTML5
Release Date
Jan 1, 2025
Rating
5.2
/10
Tags
sokoban
puzzle
block-pushing
dragon
minimalist
free
itch-io
beginner-friendly
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