Skyscrapers

Description

A solitaire city building game.

Example (random) setup for Skyscrapers

Rules

• https://ludism.org/piecepack/org/rules/Skyscrapers.pdf (local copy)
• https://web.archive.org/web/2016/http://www.piecepack.org/rules/Skyscrapers.pdf (original copy)
• SkyscrapersTextVersion

Reviews & Comments

Entry in the SolitaryConfinement contest

Interesting solitaire in which the player must turn the 24 tiles (spread in a 5x5 pattern with a gap in the middle) stacks as high as possible; the stacks must contain tiles of the same suit and in order to build them a pawn of the respective suit must be adjacent to the stacked tile. The resulting gaps are filled with coins (yet again of the same suit). The higher the stacks and the further away the coins are from them, the higher the score.

Although Skyscrapers reads like a game of optimisation, the lack of restrictions on the game's duration and the flexibility of the players' moves (both tiles and coins can be shifted onto the gap) make it possible to get the maximum score every time: all it takes is to sort out each suit into a side of the grid and stack the tiles onto the corners. Thus, Skyscrapers ends up feeling like an accessible but ultimately mechanical sliding puzzle.

-- Antonio Recuenco Muñoz

CategoryGame SolitairePuzzlesCategory ThemeCivilisationCategory