Boxville 2 review

Yes you can, and should play the charming sequel that adds another layer of challenge to its already entertaining predecessor

In 2022, Triomatica released Boxville, a cute and whimsical Amanita-styled adventure that not only made its way onto my list of favourite games, but also into my heart. Now the indie Ukrainian developer is back with a new installment in the series, filled with even more aluminium cans and square-shaped, wordless fun. Several things have even been improved since our first visit to the charming cardboard city, making Boxville 2 living proof that a sequel is sometimes better than the original.

When we first visited Boxville, we played as a nameless blue soda can that I liked to call Can Man. This time around, the hero of the story is another Boxvillager – still a soda can, but a red one, so why don’t we call him… Red. In the first scene, we see Red and his buddy trying to light some fireworks for a big city celebration. It isn’t made clear what kind of festivities these are, but if I know one thing about the Boxvillagers, it’s that they know how to have a good time. Unfortunately, lighting the huge firework doesn’t go as planned, and Red’s pal is carried off with the rocket as it shoots off into the vast distance. What else to do for our aluminium hero than to go off and try to save his friend?

Just like in the first game, the story isn’t exactly original or deep, but that’s not really necessary as it’s perfectly possible to have a great time without a complex plot. What the game offers instead is a heartfelt, puzzle-filled journey driven by themes of friendship and resilience. Red courageously ventures into the unknown on his rescue mission, showing remarkable determination and loyalty as he encounters a variety of entertaining obstacles along the way. Although he starts his journey in Boxville, he soon travels far beyond to strange and unfamiliar places like a shanty town, a remote tropical island, and even aboard a pirate ship and diving underwater.

Although this is a sequel, it isn’t a prerequisite to have played the first game. We do get a small glimpse of familiar heroes, but the story of Boxville 2 stands on its own two feet. Along with a delightful reunion with Can Man and Can Dog, we get to meet a whole myriad of new and different can characters: a Dalí-esque artist, a fortune teller, a barkeep, a beekeeper, and even a stir fry chef. You don’t interact that much with the different Boxvillagers, but they are delightfully quirky and adorable nonetheless. As in the first game, there isn’t any voice acting, as the characters communicate either with sounds such as “wha wha” or with pictograms on paper scraps or other mediums. The soundtrack is once again really wonderful, with chill lo-fi tunes that vary depending on where Red goes.

Visually, nothing but the locations has been altered since the first Boxville game, and why should it? The hand-drawn graphics are absolutely lovely, both the characters and the surroundings. The locales are detailed and whimsical, from the Chinese district of Boxville, where the streets are decorated with beautiful red paper lanterns that sway in the wind, to the city itself, where you can see box apartments spanning for miles in the distance, connected by phone lines and cables. You can’t help but fall in love with the cute and eccentric cast too, whether can-people or can-animals, who all have their own little trademarks and quirks. Everything is brilliantly and smoothly animated, from the flowing swim moves of a slightly aggressive mermaid, to a sardine cow that putters around in a field, to the quirky public transportation system, consisting of a pulley contraption with hooks on a rope, enabling Boxvillagers to cross from one part of the city to another.

Mechanically, it’s safe to say that Triomatica has stuck with the good ol’ notion of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and with good reason. Very little has changed in the point-and-click control department, the differences mostly being small but subtle improvements to the interface. In Boxville, you had an inventory menu that only became visible when you moved the cursor to the top of the screen, but in Boxville 2 the inventory is always shown in a nifty toolbar on the right. The main menu has also been revised; although its features are still signified with different symbols instead of text, the symbols are easier to understand and less likely to be mistaken for something else. (Yes, you pesky “restart game” button from the original game, I am talking about you!)

Your regular cursor is still a can-hand, which subtly pulsates when you hold it over something interactive. If you take an item from your inventory and hover it over a hotspot, it will become a little bit bigger and lighten slightly in color, although any item will do this, not just the correct one. Moving between scenes is once again very easy too; if there is an exit, it is signalled with a little arrow, and clicking it will make Red toddle over to the next scene.

Boxville 2

Genre:	Science Fiction
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D
Perspective:	Third-Person
Graphic Style:	Stylized
Gameplay:	Puzzle, Quest
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Short (1-5 hours)
Difficulty:	Medium
Theme:	Missing persons

One new thing I really appreciated is the auto-save indicator. In the first game, there wasn’t any way of knowing when your progress was being recorded, so you had to hope it occurred recently before exiting. This time, thanks to a little floppy disk icon in the bottom left corner, you can now see when it’s happening, and checkpoints are pretty frequent – a good thing since there isn’t a manual save option. In addition, the exit button in the main menu is paired with a save symbol, so that you can be sure your game will resume right where you left it when you return.

The most notable difference in gameplay is that the puzzles in Boxville 2 have been greatly improved. And where I deducted points from its predecessor for a lack of originality and challenge, hoo boy, has that been taken to heart! Sure, there are still a couple of tried-and-true classics, such as sliding tiles and memory sequences, but the variety of brainteasers here really impressed me overall. Firstly, they’re all one-offs, so you never get tired of a certain type of puzzle, and secondly, some of them are surprisingly difficult.

A couple of times you’ll meet characters who challenge you with a logic puzzle written on a piece of cardboard, requiring you to solve three consecutive IQ-like tasks. One is an algebra-ish puzzle, where you need to place pictures in the correct sequence in order to solve an equation. Another is a kind of visual pattern recognition puzzle, figuring out the missing element based on a logical relationship between images in the surrounding boxes. Oh, and did I mention that there’s still no hints?

Thankfully, not all of the puzzles are head-scratchers, such as having to put some different ice creams in the correct order, extinguishing a fire, and playing rock, paper, scissors with another can. (Actually, it's more like rock, leaf, crab claw, but when you’re on a remote island, you can’t be too picky.) There are also fetch quests and inventory puzzles, so there is plenty of fun and challenges to be had.

Although Boxville is a strange place, there is no moon logic to be found here. In most cases it is pretty obvious what you need to do in order to solve a puzzle or deliver an item to someone. If something is required to progress, it is usually not far away, and the Boxvillagers are very human-like in their needs and how to express them. There is no mystery as to what the old wise man sitting in the top of a lighthouse next to a broken light bulb wants, and if a bureaucratic can has signs everywhere saying “no ice-cream,” “no loud noises” and “no cats,” well, I think we all know what needs to happen.

Boxville 2 is compatible with a gamepad, but I preferred to play with the mouse since you need to steer the cursor around with the joystick anyway. There is no way to move Red faster either way, as he tippietaps around at the same pace everywhere he goes. It’s not too slow, thankfully, so it wasn’t the walking speed that drew the play time out in this second installment. I spent an hour or so more playing this game than the three hours on the first one, which I credit mostly to the increase in puzzle challenge. I consider that a good thing at a time when most games are getting easier, and yet Boxville 2 is careful not to overstay its welcome. I have started appreciating shorter games more, and both Boxville games have left me satisfied with what they offered but still looking forward to more.

Final Verdict

Sequels can be difficult to pull off, and more often than not they fail to live up to their predecessors. Thankfully, in Boxville 2 Triomatica have managed to create another wonderful game, keeping everything that was great about the first game while making small but noticeable improvements, including an increase in challenge. Even though I was thoroughly charmed by Boxville, the sequel ticked even more boxes for me, with its fun gameplay, adorable cast and quirky, lovingly drawn locations, and I am keeping my fingers crossed in hopes of a third visit in the future.

Aurora played Boxville 2 on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.