This award-winning debut could be this year’s Baba Is You

Developer/ publisher Patrick Traynor

Format PC

Origin US

Release 2020

When Patrick Traynor submitted his first commercial game for this year’s IGF awards, he did so more in hope than expectation. He was delighted when it made the shortlist in the Excellence In Design category alongside a host of titles that, comparatively speaking, were household names. When he won - beating the likes of Slay The Spire, Lonely Mountains: Downhill and Grand Prize winner A Short Hike - it was an eyebrow-raiser for Traynor, too. “It was surreal,” he tells us, modestly adding that even being nominated was “a bigger reward than I would have ever expected.”

Feedback from Traynor’s friends has been essential for fine-tuning the game’s puzzles, he says

The shock and delight is still audible in his voice as he recalls the result. And yet when we sit down with an early build of the now award-winning Patrick’s Parabox, it doesn’t take long for us to understand why he took the prize. His game is a recursive Sokoban-style puzzler that unfurls like a flower, steadily revealing its full splendour. Your goal is simple: you play a sentient box (two eyes distinguish it from its inanimate brethren) that must push others into clearly marked positions before reaching an exit square bearing your likeness. But some of these boxes are miniature worlds of their own: when they’re pressed up against a solid surface, you’re able to squeeze through their entrances and exits, shrinking as you head in and returning to your original size as you leave.