BoxBoy + BoxGirl! are on the Nintendo Switch and this time, everybody is here. By which I mean, all of the major characters are playable. In the main campaign, you can be Qbby or Qucy. If you have two people around, each person can be one of those two boxes. If you beat that campaign, then Qudy steps in for his own adventure. There’s a lot to do, and having everyone around makes for a very different sort of experience.
The standard single-player BoxBoy + BoxGirl! experience doesn’t change much. The difference between Qbby and Qucy is cosmetic. (Either with or without the equipped accessories.) Each of them has the same abilities. You can swap between your active character in the hub area. It is the core situation where you solve puzzles with blocks. Snaking around with blocks, using them to stop projectiles, having them act as pogo sticks for tiny jumps, making them into grappling hooks, sliding them across gaps, and ground pounding them into the floor are all the essential moves someone needs to get by.
When a second person gets pulled in, BoxBoy + BoxGirl! gets a little more inventive. In a multiplayer campaign, two people must reach the doors to proceed. Characters may have box limitations placed on them, forcing the two characters to work in tandem to create solutions. You may have to have Qucy ferry Qbby around or have Qbby trigger switches to grant Qucy safe passage. It can require a lot more thought and cooperation, which really forces people to go beyond the solutions they are familiar with to try something new. You have to get talking about boxes, which is a good sort of talk to have.
But the really fun part comes when Qudy steps in. Qudy is a different sort of box. While Qbby and Qucy are each squares, he is a rectangle. This means his puzzles take on a different kind of spin. His campaign is a single-player one and involves knowing when to place his rectangles horizontally or vertically, as well as know when to rotate his body to pass through smaller gaps. It makes for a lot more shifting around.
Which is an especially challenging process after spending hours working things out with squares. Qudy’s levels can involve tight squeezes, where you have to figure out how to layer his rectangles properly to create stairways. You need to better judge the height between platforms, for when you place rectangles vertically. If someone really wants to use as few blocks as possible, they could even try rotating Qudy’s body in such a way that maybe he jumps horizontally, rather than vertically, and gets the tip of his head to land on the other platform. Then, he could perform some small hops to get his whole self to safety.
BoxBoy + BoxGirl! attempts to do something different by bringing everyone. Qbby isn’t the only one stealing the show. Qucy is going with him to save the day. If two show up, they work together to make things right. Once their campaign is done, Qudy shows up to warp your mind and force you to think about which sorts of rectangles to place and how you should rotate him to wind through tight spaces. There are all these different ways to think through and solve puzzles, and things really work out well for Nintendo Switch owners at the end.
BoxBoy + Boxgirl! is available for the Nintendo Switch.
