The roster for puzzle games on the PlayStation 4 is strengthening itself little by little, but having launched a little over a year ago, it obviously is still not that rich in variety. Coupled with the fact that exclusives are becoming very limited and games are coming out on quite a number of platforms, one realises that there may not be a lot of space for these puzzle games. Fortunately, Pillar, a PS4 exclusive Puzzle game, aims to be a light among the emptiness of the genre on the console
Pillar is one of the most particular games I have ever seen, and it was designed to be this way. Basically, this is a personality driven game, where your actions ingame will reflect the type of game you are playing. Pillar is divided into a series of minigames, entitled especially towards a certain trait or feeling of someone’s personality, and essentially behaving that way to beat the level. What I also like about the games is that there is no indication at all of what must be done to make progress in the game, meaning one has to figure out whatever must be done by himself, even button presses and commands. For example without giving too much away, the Distant minigame involves moving your character across the map avoiding enemies, which really are just people moving about. If they see you, they will chase you until they reach you, and there is no escaping them even though you take the sharpest turns and escape their field of vision. Once they catch up, the screen goes blurry and it’s game over. By pressing the circle button you return to your previous move, which comes in handy quite a lot in the whole game not just the Distant minigame.
The game’s main point is to arrive to a certain place within the game where two characters from two different puzzles meet, so they can continue their travels together. Tasking the previous example in this case as well, the boy from the Distant minigame meets up with the girl from the Focused game, who also is trying to evade people, but in different methods than the ways used by the boy in Distant. Once again, the game does not explain clearly what needs to be done when they meet, even though it does display some buttons which can perform a specific action, generally the X button which switches from one character to the other. Apart from this combination of Focused and Distant, there are also four more games to do being Giving, Capable, Enduring and Renewing.
Personally, my favourite of the bunch was the capable puzzles, which coupled with the giving end up in a Sudoku-style game, where one must light up all the lamps in the room in order to achieve full progress. What I also liked in this is the ability to just stroll to the next rooms without attempting to solve the puzzle. Doing this though will not give you the note piece for the puzzle, and thus one will face a not so tough decision, but which will impact the motivation to do the puzzles altogether. A person like me, who loves logic and working his brain, had no problem at all with having to work my way around the enigma, but others may not be so willing to challenge their grey matter areas.
All of these games feature their own mechanic, which I will not spoil here since I believe that the magic of the game depends quite a lot on the relationship which the player begins to have with Pillar. Pillar is not only about the minigames that it poses to the players, but relies on its beautiful artistic style and its minimalistic yet emotional background music, which transport the player almost in the game world itself and put you in the characters’ shoes. Thus it comes quite natural that in order to go further in the game, you must discover little by little what is the gist of the game and hence learn what you must do in order to beat it.
Your progression is also tracked through notes, which are earned gradually upon completing parts of the levels, which make up one larger note with all the small pieces gathered along the way. There are four major notes, being one for the Focused, one for the Distant, one for the Capable /Giving combo and the other for the Enduring/Renewing combo.
With all that said, Pillar is a fantastic game, one which is simple yet challenging enough to tease anyone thinking it will be an easy playthrough, while rewarding the ones who embrace the spirit of the game together with the different levels themselves. It may also help people discover their own personal traits, which could translate into being especially capable at some minigames while having trouble with others. Whatever the case, anyone playing Pillar will not only enjoy the game on a physical and emotional level like other games, but will also trigger mental instincts as well.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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