This review was written for Thinky Games[thinkygames.com] and has been cross-posted here. Please see the original article[thinkygames.com].

Curator page : Anokturnus

Building complicated snowmen, driving aliens through intergalactic railways, riding tree trunks across the sea, what crazy adventure could await Draknek and Friends' beloved Monster in this new puzzling mini-expedition? A MELTDOWN! Our protagonist is now in charge of maintaining a facility full of gadgets and machines, and it’s not going well. The reactor is on the verge of exploding, so you'll need to help our humanoid friend reach it and fix it before it’s too late!

The Electrifying Incident: A Monster Mini-Expedition is a Sokoban puzzle game that explores the genre in new and interesting ways. Draknek and Friends’ previous Sokoban works have always had a soft spot for optional interconnected puzzles (which are my favorite kind of puzzles btw). These meta puzzles force you to truly think outside the box and reward ingenuity in a way no classic puzzle can reproduce. The only “downside” is their lack of approachability. When a game uses meta puzzles, you usually know you’re in for some extremely challenging stuff! A Good Snowman is Hard to Build managed to offer a pretty balanced compromise with its optional dream world puzzles, but yeah, they were still a bit tricky for many people. So, what if interconnected puzzles suddenly became very approachable? That’s the whole point of The Electrifying Incident!

Let's chat about the basics first. The path to the reactor is blocked by doors that you can open by activating pressure plates, and these plates can be activated by placing blocks on them. When placed correctly, the block completes the circuit and electricity can run into the door to open it. If your little dude touches an electrified block or walks across a live connected circuit, they'll get fried. That’s pretty much all you will find: pressure plates, blocks, and electricity. However, that doesn’t prevent the game from having a surprising number of different interactions. The facility is full of interconnected rooms, and you’ll be visiting them more than once. Cubes also often need to be carried throughout several puzzles, meaning solving self-contained puzzles is not the only focus of the game.

The puzzle design is already an original twist on Sokobans, yet that’s not all! The facility is full of dangerous electrical hazards, thus, our little Monster is equipped with a high-end mechanical grabber arm that lets it safely manipulate cubes from a distance. Instead of directly pushing cubes, you need to use this arm contraption, which is pretty funny for a Sokoban game. This reminds me a lot of Candle Prick which has similar gameplay. The mechanical arm will also hold its shape when you go around a corner, letting you bend the arm how you like. However, if you grab an electrified block with the grabber, the metallic arm will conduct the electricity and...well..your little Monster friend will, again, get electrocuted.

The Electrifying Incident is extremely short… like really, really short. It took me 25 minutes to finish the game, which was to be expected as it’s advertised as a “bite-sized experience”. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve complained about unexploited mechanics potential, which can be true for most short games. They usually create mechanics only to scratch the surface and call it a day, but The Electrifying Incident is different. The structure of the game stays true to the Sokoban genre, you play with classic mechanics in an unconventional world, and the grabber-arm adds just the right amount of originality to the mechanics. The Electrifying Incident inverts unconventional and classic thinking in small, interesting ways.

Spoilers for late-game puzzles!

When you’re in front of the reactor doors, what you have to do next isn’t obvious at first sight, and it might seem like you’re missing a cube. So the first thing that crosses your mind is “I have to go back to the previous puzzle and get a cube out of there”, because that’s essentially what you’ve been doing until now. I wouldn’t be surprised if many people got caught up thinking that, but in reality, the solution is much simpler and only involves a classic trick. You then proceed to electrocute yourself to create a circuit and restart the reactor, another trick I found really funny and clever.

Now, there’s one last important thing I need to talk about. You see, when you finish the game, there’s one achievement you’ll be missing. The Electrifying Incident truly shines in the postgame, this last achievement asks you to find a way to restart the reactor safely. You’re supposed to have only one cube available at the reactor, which you’re using to electrocute yourself. Restarting the reactor safely means creating a circuit with… 5 cubes. Yes, you have to bring 5 cubes up there. At the time of writing this review, I've only managed to bring 4. I can tell you it was already quite the journey. This is some pretty challenging stuff that fully makes use of everything in the game, including hard-to-find grabber-arm setups.

The Electrifying Incident is much more than just a nice and short game, it’s actually secretly a giant meta puzzle. That’s absolute genius in my book, and what an incredible way to turn its short duration into a strength! It’s hard not to be hungry for more, and this bite was more than enough for me to play more. Meta puzzles are rare, so it’s good to see we can always count on Draknek and Friends to consistently deliver. As always, I’m looking forward to their next games to see how they will manage to surprise me yet again.

…and I’m still waiting for part 2 of the Bonfire Peaks DLC, please give it to me!

Took me 40 minutes to beat. It was fun but it was way too short. If you read this Draknek and Friends. You already have the framework for a great game, all the sounds, graphics, story, framework, everything you need. Why not just bulk it out a bit even if its just some bonus contained levels for after you complete the story that serve as a real challenge, I would have happily played with this formula for another couple of hours or so, maybe with one or two extra mechanics spread in (optional). As is £3 for 40 minutes of content is a stretch

All of Draknek and Friends' games are really polished and clever puzzle games (particularly the absolutely massive & insanely designed A Monster's Expedition Through Puzzling Exhibitions) and The Electrifying Incident is no exception.
However, this game really is very mini compared to their other games with only a couple puzzles that can be beat in an hour, making it feel more like a demo for a grander game that explores the full use of the grappling arm mechanic. I don't think I would have recommended it if it were not for the cheap price and the final optional ending puzzle that has that Draknek spin to it