Bansoko is a reimagined, space-themed 🚀 clone of MS-DOS Soko-Ban from 1984 created in Python using Pyxel.

You can download 📦 for both Windows and Linux from the latest release, or from:

📖 Introduction

Welcome to Bansoko!

You are a scavenger. You collect cargo that people have left in abandoned ships in deep space. It's a dangerous job, that's why we're using robots.

Your goal is to use a remotely controlled robot to push all crates to cargo bays. Remember, you can only push them (you cannot pull) Fortunately, in case of a mistake, you can undo as many steps as you need.

Good luck!

🎮 Installation

Download

The simplest way to play is to download a standalone build from the latest release or from itch.io. Nothing else is needed: Python and every library the game uses are bundled.

Windows

Install Python (version 3.11 or higher) and make sure that python is added to PATH.

Install Bansoko by running:

pip install -U bansoko

Run the game:

bansoko

Linux

Install python3 (version 3.11 or higher). No SDL2 packages are required — Pyxel ships its own copy.

On Ubuntu:

sudo apt install python3 pipx

Install Bansoko by running:

pipx install bansoko

Run the game:

bansoko

💻 Development setup

1. Install prerequisites

uv is the only prerequisite. It installs a suitable Python itself, so one does not need to be present.

Windows

pip install uv

Linux

On Ubuntu:

sudo apt install git pipx
pipx install uv

2. Set up the project

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/kfurtak1024/bansoko

Navigate to the directory Bansoko was cloned to.

Create the virtual environment and install all dependencies needed for development:

uv sync

3. Run the game

Run Bansoko from the virtual environment created in the previous step:

uv run python -m bansoko

4. Run the checks

uv run pytest
uv run pylint bansoko resbuilder tests
uv run mypy bansoko resbuilder tests

Tests that need a display are skipped automatically when there is none. To run them without a desktop session:

xvfb-run -a uv run pytest

5. Build a standalone binary

uv run pyinstaller bansoko.spec --noconfirm

This produces a single executable in dist/. Release downloads are built by the release workflow, which builds the Linux one inside a manylinux_2_28 container so that it runs on older distributions too.

🧰 Modding

Bansoko is heavily modifiable thanks to included resource builder. More information on how to 'mod' it can be found on the Bansoko modding page.

After changing anything under resources/, rebuild the game data:

uv run python -m resbuilder resources/main.ressrc --outdir bansoko/gamedata --force

The generated files are checked in, and the test suite fails if they do not match the assets they were built from.

📝 Changelog

Notable changes for each release are listed in CHANGELOG.md.

🤝 How to contribute

Submitting an issue

Use the issue tracker to submit bug reports and feature/enhancement requests. When submitting a report, please select the appropriate template.

Submitting a 'mod'

If you have created a modification for Bansoko which you would like to publish then please contact me via contact@krzysztoffurtak.dev

⚖️ License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Copyright © 2020-2026 Krzysztof Furtak