Thank you to the developer for sending us this game to review!

Box #341 is a puzzle platforming game about a sentient box waking up alone in a warehouse far from their shipping zone. The box realizes that if it doesn’t make it there, it may never be shipped to its destination, so it begins a grand trek through the warehouse to be shipped off. Along the way there, it encounters a series of colorful friends like a mouse, a pigeon, a fox, an insect, and a bat. The animals later discover that, mysteriously, all of the humans inside and outside of the warehouse disappeared without a trace. What could have happened to them all? The setup and character interactions have an endearing charm to them like reading a simple and sweet book for kids, and I enjoy it a lot. There are some grammatical errors in the dialogue and tips, but I found that this, too, added to the charm.

Box #341 is a straightforward platformer with puzzle mechanics that slowly build upon another. The central mechanic of the game is that if your box isn’t upright, it can’t move on to the next level, so you’ve got to use little ramps placed around each level that rotate your box by 90 degrees. By the time you’ve got this mastered, the game introduces you to dyes. Dyes are placed around the floors, walls, and ceilings of the stage and come in different colors, each with their own abilities. Red dyes increase your jump height, yellow dyes increase your movement speed for long jumps, and so on. Although mechanics similar to this undoubtedly existed beforehand, it feels reminiscent of Portal 2’s gels. But even after all the dyes have been introduced, the game continues to throw new mechanics at you and create more complexities. It does a great job of teaching you the basics of an idea, having you show mastery of that mechanic, and then smoothly moving to the next one.

The game has similarly simple but clean pixel art that works very well with the premise and tone of the game. Lamps hanging from the ceiling cast stark, dynamic shadows while little particles of dust float across the screen. These little details and the tileset employed help sell the feeling of an abandoned, industrial warehouse, and the simplicity is rather quaint. Again, I’d have to call it endearing—it doesn’t attempt to do much, but it delivers on what it does. That said, the music is just alright. There’s only one song I disliked, but in general the music is a bit bland and mostly there to fill background noise aside from the sound effects, which I’d also call good enough. Controls were straightforward, only employing WASD for movement and your spacebar for jumping, and I found them to be responsive and good for controlling tight jumps or tricky moves.

Morally, there are no concerns, as there’s no language or offensive content in the game.

Overall, Box #341 is a very fun little title that feels very much like a kids game, and I appreciate it more for that. It’s straightforward, simple in scope and solid in execution, even if it isn’t terribly impressive. I got around 2 hours of gameplay from completing every level, and I’d say for the low asking price of $3.49 that’s more than enough for the fun I had. If you’re ever looking for a single session of fun on a budget, this is the perfect title.