Gentoo Rescue

Gentoo Rescue is an ice-style sokoban, which means that once a block (or, in this case, a gentoo) is moved, it will continue its forward momentum indefinitely unless stopped. Gentoo Rescue's twist on the genre comes with the addition of various items the gentoos collect from around the grid and which then modify their movement in various ways, essentially functioning as if/else statements when interacting with other items and determining priority in resolution order. For example, a rocket will propel a gentoo forward, unless a magnet happens to be in an adjacent square, in which case the magnet's effect will take priority and the rocket gentoo will actually move backwards. With some reviews comparing it to Baba is You and mentioning that it has a "meta" layer, I would like to temper your expectations - the "meta" layer is far less mind-bendingly expansive, as it only consists of importing a small handful of items into a small handful of puzzles. The term "meta" refers to self-transcendence, and Gentoo Rescue doesn't really do that, because the things you do in the endgame are largely the same things you were doing before - you're just doing them more often. I think it shares more DNA with another lauded puzzle game: Stephen's Sausage Roll. Both games rely on an intricate rule set which is taught through emergent gameplay. However, Jagriff has done this infinitely better than Stephen Lavelle. Where SSR usually required randomly screwing around until you stumbled upon some obscure interaction, Gentoo Rescue keeps and updates a journal of every single rule you've discovered, and more than that, informs you of which rules are relevant to the puzzle you are doing. You will always know if your game knowledge is complete enough to tackle the challenge, or if this is a puzzle that requires you to experiment in ways you had not before considered. It cannot be overstated how much frustration this removes. Where SSR felt actively hostile to any attempt to enjoy it, Gentoo Rescue feels like it really wants me to succeed. To that end, in addition to the journal, Gentoo Rescue has robust in-game hints, beginning at the level of "Remember that water is wet" in obscurity and helpfulness, but gradually escalating to occasionally explicitly telling you some of the moves required to create the solution. Most puzzles have items interact on a one-on-one basis, which makes the outcomes intelligible and predictable, allowing you to work backwards to deduce the solution, as all good puzzles should. However, there are a small handful of endgame levels which are too clever for their own good, because they rely on setting up a board state that then allows for a dozen actions to be executed simultaneously, with the order of resolution based on a knowledge of the game's rule set that is too deep for most players to ever care to learn. Even with the in-game hints explicitly outlining the logic behind some of these Rube Goldbergian monstrosities, my reaction was "Uh huh, sure, whatever, I'll take your word for it" as opposed to slapping my head and saying "Ah! Of course!" I'm pretty average in my ability with puzzle games and it took me 25 hours to roll credits, which then revealed a further goal that took another 15 hours to reach, with 75% of puzzles complete. That is a lot of bang for your buck. I am still cleaning up a bunch of unfinished business, however, while I usually go for 100% in puzzle games, I probably won't bother here because I am beginning to find the unintuitive solutions to some puzzles quite grating. With that said, they represent a tiny fraction of the 321 levels on offer and this is an easy recommendation. Edit: I would also be remiss to not acknowledge the quality of the music. As far as I'm aware, the developer himself composed and performed it, which makes it all the more remarkable. In so many puzzle games, the soundtrack is an afterthought - something I turn off ASAP because its tinny, repetitive and actively distracting.…

Highly, highly recommended. I play a lot of Sokoban puzzlers, and Gentoo has earned its place right next to Stephen, Monster, and Baba as one of the greats. (Depending on your definition, sliding ice puzzles may not be "true" Sokobans, but they're definitely a "close cousin") Gentoo Rescue introduces new items and mechanics very organically, and has a great "discovery" system tracking and describing how the mechanics work as you encounter them. It manages to do this while still providing countless "a-ha" moments and not spoiling the complex interactions possible in its surprisingly deep engine. After beating the main game, there are plenty of deeper challenges left to pursue for 100%, however by this point you'll have a deep enough understanding of the mechanics (and you'll have learned a couple "shortcuts" to get around the levels) that finishing it off remains satisfying rather than tedious.

Absolutely delicious puzzles!! Sort of reminds me of Puddle Knights due to the cheesy and simple aesthetic that undersells the top-tier puzzle quality. I'd always known that ice puzzles had potential i'd always known it