Pile Up! Box by Box Review

Pile Up! Box by Box is a quirky family-friendly co-operative 3D platformer developed by Seed and published by HandyGames. You control a box that is helping the creatures of a quirky world made of cardboard. There’s been a terrible earthquake that has caused the world to start losing all colour. It’s your job to help them restore colour by solving puzzles to completing themed worlds accessed through portals. There are no enemies or anything, just box-based puzzle solving with up to 4 players. The more players, of course, the more fun you are going to have!

You access each portal by finding a key, which is achieved by overcoming the main objective of the previous world. The game doesn’t give you the freedom to enter all of its four worlds from the beginning because you need to learn and unlock different style of boxes.

Each world is divided into small rooms, separated by a piece of cardboard. The puzzles to progress are simple enough, from stacking up boxes to reach a new area or moving a box onto a switch. The fun side of this is that there is multiple ways of solving puzzles, especially when there multiple people playing. There were some situations where playing solo I had to move boxes onto multiple switches, but with multiple players this could be simplified by standing on them. You can die and take as much time as you want and it won’t impact your journey.

You can also pick up small cubes. There are 400 per level to collect and you can use them to buy different cosmetics for your box. They’re not all easy to reach and you will have to do some hunting to find them all.

The huge shame is that it’s only couch co-op and not online multiplayer. It would make it a lot more enjoyable if you could play through this with an online friend. It still holds some fun playing solo but I do believe this is made for playing with others, solving puzzles together and making life a lot easier. A portion that does require 2 players is the arcade section, where you can play mini games like football or tic-tac-toe.

Overall, it’s not a very long title compared to most couch co-op games I have played but it still brings some enjoyment. I would be keen to see what it’s like to play with a team of four as I can imagine it could be more enjoyable, so there is definitely some re-playability there.

Conclusion

Pile Up! Box by Box is definitely an enjoyable couch co-op title. The lack of online multiplayer sucks but you shouldn’t avoid playing it purely for that. Get some friends round now Covid restrictions allow and have some fun working things out!

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox Series X/S. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.