ROX

Sometimes, in accordance with my duty to report that a game exists, there's nothing left but silence. ROX from 1993 is one of those pieces where the creator decided that puzzles don't need to be fun—they just need to be hard.

It's a logic game where you fit colored shapes into a grid according to given rules. A typical nineties solitaire for dull moments—nothing more, nothing less. The goal is simple: place pieces so that colors, shapes, or numbers match depending on the level. You can do a lot of the work mentally before you even touch the mouse. There's no time pressure, no panic, just silence and a grid.

The controls are tolerable—you pick a piece, drag it, drop it. The graphics are empty, a minimalist style that would make the game boring even in retrospect. Sounds? They're there. You'll note them as "they exist." Mechanically it works, nothing breaks, but the game never gives you the feeling of victory. You solve a puzzle, see "OK" or "Try Again" and move on. Your brain doesn't even notice.

ROX represents the boom of logic games on DOS in the nineties—a time when people believed that anything exercising the brain would automatically be interesting. Indie in its most primitive form back then. The curious thing is that you spend time with such a game even though it's not fun. You solve it like a supermarket bill—mechanically, without passion.

Play it today if you're looking for that specific feeling of a dull logic puzzle from the old days. It's not a bad game, just unnecessarily boring. Spend your time on Tetris or Sokoban instead—the satisfaction from solving a level there is worth it.