Sokoban: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Sokoban (Japanese for "warehouse keeper") is a transport puzzle in which the player pushes boxes around a maze, viewed from above, and tries to put them in designated spaces. Only one box may be pushed at a time, not two, and they cannot be pulled. As the puzzle would be extremely difficult to create physically, it is usually implemented as a video game.

Sokoban was created in 1982 by Hiroyuki Imabayashi, and was published by Thinking Rabbit, a software house based in Takarazuka, Japan. Thinking Rabbit also released sequels - Boxxle, Sokoban Perfect and Sokoban Revenge.

If you are interested in trying the game you will be glad to know that there are countless clones of Sokoban available on the Internet, for almost every desktop computer platform and for several handheld platforms. A version of Sokoban has even been written in sed.

Several variants of Sokoban exist, such as Hexoban, Trioban and Multiban.