Sokoban

Sokoban, which means "warehouse keeper" in Japanese, is a beautiful and challenging solitaire game. The game was created in 1981 by Hiroyuki Imabayashi. The object of the game is to push boxes into their correct position in a crowded warehouse with a minimal number of pushes and moves. The boxes are so heavy that you can only push one of them at a time. There are 90 puzzles (levels) to solve.

The game can be run either as an applet or as an application. To run the applet open the file Sokoban.html in a browser or go here. To run the application double click the file Sokoban.jar.

Use the keyboard to solve a puzzle. Click the applet or window to obtain keyboard focus. Select a puzzle with the page_up and page_down keys. Move the man with the arrow keys. Initialize a puzzle with the I key. Save and restore a position with the S and R keys. Undo moves with the U key.

The application has additional capability. Save a solution to a file with the W key. Playback a solution from a saved file by first pressing the P key and then pressing the Spacebar to show each move. During playback only the Spacebar is active. This condition is shown in the status bar.

The program and Java source code can be obtained here.