The Boxed Life – this mind-numbing tricky set of puzzles & riddles requires lateral thinking. A puzzler’s must-have game!

by Paul Wilks Apr 27, 2012 11:30 AM – Leave your thoughts

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The Boxed Life is an entertaining and quirky puzzle game which features diverse gameplay and lots of challenging stages to unlock. The beauty of it is that you never really know what you’re going to get next. Similar perhaps to games like The Moron Test and Impossible Level Game, where the answers are often incredibly obvious and lateral thinking is required to complete levels, The Boxed Life is true puzzling bliss.

Price: Free

Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Everyone

AndroidTapp.com Android Game Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

Diverse and challenging gameplay!
22 unique stages!
Good sound!

Cons

Due to the variety, the graphical experience is quite poor.
Occasional crashes.

Features:

There is a quirky puzzle sub-genre in the Google Play Store that I feel The Boxed Life slips right into. Games like Impossible Level Game and The Moron Test challenge gamers in a wide variety of different ways, leaving cryptic and mysterious clues as to how levels should be completed. Often the game feels very self-aware and really gets into your head. The Boxed Life is a similarly curious game from the very first stage. You need to guide a sitting man to the exit. While you have on-screen arrow keys as controls, these seem to do nothing, you simply have to drag and drop him on the exit banner. Things are never quite how they look…

With The Boxed Life, the Google Play Store blurb suggests ‘you are lost within the confines of your heart, soul and mind‘… a kind of pseudo-challenge to fans of tough puzzle games. Every level is unique from the last. Sometimes you have to dodge traffic or factory managers, others work like a basic platform game. With one level you have to line up numbers and switch them on, and others still require you to drag and drop this sitting guy to a new spot. Levels can be incredibly easy or fiendishly difficult and you never know what is coming next. But, like all such puzzles, it’s easy when you know how.

The thing that perhaps puts people off these kind of games are the graphics. Because the game is essentially a series of diverse mini-games, visuals are quite sparse and very basic indeed. While The Boxed Life has a lot of charm, this lack of consistency might put players off somewhat. That said, puzzle gamers used to the genre will probably cast aside the need for eye-candy in favour of the mind-numbing challenges the game presents. The Boxed Life really gets your synapses going, throwing all kinds of tricky challenges your way, a festival of lateral thinking and clever riddles. If you have previously enjoyed the games already mentioned, this will be right up your street.

: Boxed Life – Main menu

: Boxed Life – Unlock stages

: Boxed Life – OK, I still can’t figure this one out

: Boxed Life – Hint

: Boxed Life – Bizarre but engaging gameplay

: Boxed Life – Avoid factory bosses

: Boxed Life – Occasional Japanese language overspill

: Boxed Life – Build up points to unlock later stages

Fun Factor:

Games like The Boxed Life are very engaging and often throw up forums dedicated to sharing solutions and providing hints. If you enjoy the sense of achievement in completing lateral thinking and logic puzzle games this is a real treat.

Addictive:

Depending on the gamer, this can be either incredibly addictive, incredibly infuriating or both! The game is certainly challenging and if you get into it, it is tricky to put down.

Graphics:

As mentioned the graphics are incredibly simplistic, even for a puzzle game. From the outside, it looks like you’re playing a series of really shoddy mini-games. The visuals look like a cut-out collage of images and backgrounds, simplistic controls and strange pictures- not very polished at all. However, underneath the ugly veneer the game is really quite clever, you just have to recognise the beauty on the inside!

Accelerometer, Vibration & Sound:

The sound is something you either like or despise. I quite liked it; spiralling piano pieces and apt sound effects dotted here and there. It’s more than a little weird but quite atmospheric. You can, of course, turn it off if you wish.

AndroidTapp.com Rating

AndroidTapp.com Rating! (4.3 out of 5)

Should you Download The Boxed Life? The Boxed Life is free so, if you’re a fan of puzzlers, definitely give it a go. While I really liked the diverse gameplay, the graphics are pretty bad overall- even for games of this genre and that lets it down. Perhaps these are part of the games charm and I’ve just completely missed the point, but I still think games deserve a little better. That said, the real meat of the game is the puzzles themselves, which are utterly superb and very challenging. On that basis, if you’re an eye-candy junkie, this is one to avoid. However, if you like lateral thinking or logic puzzlers, download this as soon as you can!

Developer: K.N. Cooksonia

Tags: Android App, Android Apps, Android Game, AndroidTapp.com App Review, Boxed Life, Impossible Level Game, Lateral thinking, logic, Moron Test, Puzzle

Categorised in: Brain & Puzzle, Casual