Here’s an odd thing: in 1996, Microsoft hired Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris.
One of the games he designed at Microsoft was Pandora’s Box, a visual puzzle game in which you travel the globe, searching for trickster gods who are mixing up the world. It’s quite an ambitious puzzle game and a huge stretch for Alexey Pajitnov, who previously had been making games like Hatris, which is like Tetris except you stack hats. Look it up, it’s weird.
And more than just being a well-made puzzle game, it also seems to be a deliberate showcase for Windows 95. It’s a lot of things, and it can feel almost overwhelmed with wonder by all the possibilities.
Pandora’s Box (read on The Obscuritory)
The pictures in Pandora’s Box get stretched, rotated, distorted, split up, put back together, and spun around in 3D, which were only possible now with Windows 95. That’s not to say this game is a tech demo – it was released well into the lifespan of Windows 95, after the novelty would have faded – but it certainly feels like an attempt to design a game around what the developers could do now.
Even when they’re uneven, the puzzles are surprising, often thought-provoking, occasionally delightful, each clever in a different way, and the game benefits from their restless variety. There are so many different approaches to what chaos looks like and how to restore order from it.
