Microsoft · 1999 · Windows

Remember Pandora's Box?

The picture-puzzle game by Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris. Seven tricksters scattered the pieces of Pandora's box around the world, and 350 puzzles stood between you and getting them back.

If you played it on a family PC around the turn of the millennium, you probably still remember the music, the wooden frames and the strange satisfaction of the Rotascope. This page is for you.

Play the new game it inspired Watch it again

Pandora holding her box: Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting of 1871

What was Pandora's Box?

Pandora's Box was a puzzle game for Windows, released by Microsoft on 30 September 1999. Alexey Pajitnov designed it. He had created Tetris in Moscow in 1984 and joined Microsoft in 1996, and Pandora's Box was the first game he built there from the ground up.

Its puzzles are about looking rather than logic. Every puzzle is a picture, often a famous painting, a sculpture or a photograph of a landmark, broken up in some ingenious way. You put it back together. Pajitnov's idea was that the puzzles should appeal to intuition and observation more than to hard reasoning.

The story borrows from myth. Pandora's box lies in pieces, scattered around the world by seven tricksters from the world's folklore. You travel city by city to find the pieces, and capture each trickster in turn.

The original game's city screen for Delhi: the Taj Mahal, ten puzzle buttons, the bonus counters and the Coyote trickster's portrait — The city screen. Ten puzzles per city, and one of them hides a piece of the box. (Delhi, in the Coyote level.)

Released: 30 September 1999 (North America)
Designer: Alexey Pajitnov
Publisher: Microsoft
Platform: Windows PC, on CD-ROM
Puzzles: 350, in ten puzzle types, plus seven trickster challenges
World tour: 35 city visits, from New York to Nairobi
Later edition: Puzzle Game of the Year Edition, with 50 extra puzzles

How it played

Pick a city on the world map. Each trickster's level has five cities, and each city has ten puzzles.
Solve puzzles to find the hidden piece. One puzzle in every city hides a piece of the box. The others hand out hints, which place a piece for you, and wild cards, which solve a whole puzzle. Every tenth puzzle solved earned a wild card too.
Beat the clock for a bonus. From the second level on, many puzzles had a target time. Beat it and the game showed you where the city's piece was hidden, or gave you extra wild cards.
Face the trickster. With all five pieces found, the trickster's challenge opened. The later ones chained several puzzle types together, and each stage's finished picture became the next stage's scrambled start.

The original game's box screen: an ornate gold box with a duck, a bag and other relief pieces fitted around a central medallion — Each level fills one face of the box: four pieces around the edge, then the trickster at the centre.

There was also a puzzles-only mode for anyone who wanted to skip the story and just play.

All ten puzzle types, explained →

Reviews and awards

Critics liked it. GameSpot named it its Puzzle and Classics Game of the Year for 1999, and wrote that it proved Pajitnov was "more than just the king of the simple game". The Electric Playground called it the best computer puzzle game of 1999. It was runner-up for Puzzle/Classics Game of the Year at Computer Gaming World and for Classic Game of the Year at Computer Games Strategy Plus, and was nominated at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' 3rd Interactive Achievement Awards. For six weeks it was PC Data's best-selling puzzle game.

Videos

Watch it again, through other fans' eyes. Videos load from YouTube only when you press play.

**The original trailer** (1:20). Uploaded by RetroAdvantage.

**LGR: Pandora's Box review** (8:49). A look back from Lazy Game Reviews.

**A Look at Pandora's Box** (12:26). From MerryBytes.

**Intro and gameplay, no commentary** (17:07). From Completionator.

**Speedrun: 23:12 any%**. Sirbrute shows how fast it can go.

Coming soon

The Pandora's Puzzle Box trailer

Our trailer. Coming with the iPhone app.

Can you still play it?

Not easily. As far as we know it has never been sold as a download, and the CD's SafeDisc copy protection doesn't work on Windows 10 or 11. If you still have the disc, an old PC or a Windows XP virtual machine is the most reliable way.

Ways to play the original today →

Pandora's Puzzle Box

We loved Pandora's Box so much that we made a new puzzle game in its spirit, for iPhone and the web. It's still being built: the browser preview has the first places to explore, and more puzzles arrive as they're made.

A world tour of picture puzzles, with seven tricksters to catch.
Paintings, sculpture and photographs, many from open-access museum collections.
Earn tokens to unlock new places, and replay puzzles for faster stars.
Its own original music, which shifts with the mood of each picture.
No account needed. Your progress stays on your device.

Try the preview in your browser iPhone app: coming soon

Pandora's Puzzle Box is an independent game, not affiliated with Microsoft or Alexey Pajitnov.

Pandora's Puzzle Box on iPhone: the title screen