Review – Pile Up! Box to Box

Pile Up! Box to Box is a 3D platformer puzzler developed by Seed By Seed and published by HandyGames. This indie adventure can be played alone but the real draw card is the ability to play it cooperatively with up to 3 friends and developing team building skills to collect items and overcome puzzles.

In Pile Up! Box to Box players control characters known as Boxlings, charming little boxes that can jump and glide around. Boxlings fit the games world, as the whole world and its inhabitants are all made up of cardboard. It’s a neat effect and reminded me of the PlayStation exclusive Tearaway Unfolded.

The story for Pile Up! Box to Box is simple, the world has become void of colour and it is the players job to glide around each of the 4 worlds, doing tasks for the world’s cardboard animals by collecting keys, cubes and other items to bring back colour and life to the region.

There is no combat nor enemies in Pile Up! Box to Box. The gameplay for the main mode involves players exploring each map, which is split up into on screen sections, through solving puzzles by stacking boxes, using special boxes, standing or placing boxes on pressure plates or mixing these things together. Once completed, all players move to the next section and rinse and repeat. What mixes up the gameplay is the puzzle types that require different boxes, such as springboards, exploding boxes that destroys obstacles or boxes that glides to get to unreachable areas.

On gameplay, the Boxlings control fine and are swift in movement, although the jump does take some time to get use too, especially on tight platforming sections. Even if the player does fall from a section, there is no death in Pile Up! Box to Box and our little Boxlings just spawn back in for another try. The placement of boxes can start off as fidgety, as some puzzles only provide small room for opportunity, but once I had the first region under my belt, this issue faded with continued experience. One neat feature is that if the player messes up, such as losing boxes in unreachable areas, a simple double button press resets that small section of the map and keeps the gameplay flowing.

There are plenty of items to collect as well, the main one being the small pellet boxes that unlocks costumes for the Boxlings such as a sushi roll and a bee. Players can also find gaffer used to unlock tougher star areas allowing players to find collectable puzzle pieces, and there are also arcade cabinets to be found that unlocks the mini games. These mini games such as box football and naughts and crosses are little extra distractions away from the campaign but if the player is not thorough in their exploration then they can easily be missed. This is a little disappointing as the mini games are one of Pile Up! Box to Box’s draw cards, but players need to put a few hours into the title before being able to play them all.

Pile Up! Box to Box art design is a winner with the charm of the cardboard world, making it feel welcoming and safe. While the graphical department is not going to push any device to its limits it is very nice to look at. The music and sound design are nothing that is going to wow players but it’s functional and uplifting score fits the title well.

With Pile Up! Box to Box’s focus being on its cooperative gameplay, it is great for family and friends to get around one television. The disappointing part is there is no online component. So, if you have no one at home, and many of us are currently in lockdown at the moment, players might want to wait until they have cooperative options. I did play through the campaign in approximately 3-hours with my 6-year-old and had a great time doing so, in saying that, I had to do all the puzzle solving work. Although 3 hours may seem short, completionists will get a kick of hunting down every collectible which could add an extra hour or two.

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Pottsy for One More Game

7 – Good – This is an all-round solid game that delivers some features really well. It’s a game that most gamers will likely enjoy. If you’re not a fan of the game or genre then you may want to wait for a deal before picking it up.

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Pile Up! Box to Box was reviewed on an Xbox Series X. It is also available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

The publisher kindly provided code for this game. All thoughts on this game are ours and ours alone.