Sokoban

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Japanese 倉庫番 (sōkoban, “warehouseman”).

Proper noun

Sokoban

1. (video games) A computer puzzle game, devised in 1980 and frequently reimplemented, in which the player must push boxes to designated locations under a set of movement constraints.
   • 1998, Robert Mercer, Eric Neufeld, Advances in Artificial Intelligence:

     These so-called deadlock states are largely responsible for the failure of our attempts to solve positions in the game of Sokoban.

   • 2000, Zbigniew W Ras, Setsuo Ohsuga, editors, Foundations of Intelligent Systems:

     The sokoban problem encodes a small instance of a well known computer game, where a single stone must be pushed to its goal position.

   • 2002, Jonathan Schaeffer, H. J. Van Den Herik, Chips Challenging Champions, page 30:

     Sokoban exhibits a large number of difficult search-space properties.