Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve found ourselves playing over the last few days. Okay, the bad news: sincere apologies but only Donlan had time to contribute this time. The good news is a lot of other people were too busy because they’re putting together a huge feature for next week. Enjoy!
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.
I’ve spent hours with Mystic Pillars, and I’ve held off writing it up so far because I’m still struggling to put into words exactly what you do. This puzzle game is an ingenious spin on Mancala, a game that I absolutely adore, but it takes the risky approach of building its play around numbers, and I’ve always found numbers extremely daunting in puzzle games.
I shouldn’t have, though. Mystic Pillars is all about bringing down a series of pillars by moving a specific number of beads onto them. The number of beads each pillar requires is clearly displayed, and the fun comes from understanding the way that the beads move over distances from one pillar to another, and then fitting all that understanding into the number of moves each puzzle gives you.