Musical puzzle game Resynth is out now

You know what Sokoban puzzles are? They're the ones where you have to push boxes around on a grid until they're in the right positions, normally in the corners of an oddly shaped warehouse. And then, if you're me, you realize you've accidentally squeezed one of those boxes into a corner and because you can only push and not pull there's no way to get it out and you quit.

Resynth is a Sokoban-style puzzle game from two indie designers who previously worked on the paint-splatting platformer de Blob, which had an excellent jazz/funk soundtrack. Music's important to Resynth too. While you're pushing blocks around there's a white line wiping across the level from left to right. Each time it interacts with an object it plays a beat, so as you move everything into its right place the repeating music of that level gets more complete, until finally the level and the tune achieve harmony.

In theory, anyway. In practice I put something in the wrong spot and then wish I could pull it out even though that would defeat the entire point of Sokoban. Fortunately in Resynth you can hold down Z to undo moves, which it does with a cute rewind sound effect.

Resynth is out now on Steam. It's got a level editor too.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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