Pyramology

Designed by Jon Brough during Covid lockdown, Pyramology is a clever, easy-to-play tile placement game for 1-6 players that feels like a three-dimensional version of Dominoes and was among the games exhibited at this year's UK Games Expo. It's played using 70 stackable pyramid-shaped pieces with various combinations of four colours on each pyramid's four triangular sides. Yellow triangles have a value of 1 point, green 2 points, red 3 points and blue 4 points. The pyramids are placed out in a 3 x 3 grid.

The solitaire game has all the pyramids available at the start and solo play is a puzzle optimisation game to maximise your score. With 2-6 players, 50-52 pyramids are divided equally among the players with the remainder left in the bag and only drawn when a player cannot place one of their pyramids on their turn. Like Dominoes, Pyramology is a tile shedding game, in that it ends when a player has no pyramids left to place out, but the player who is first to go out won't necessarily be the winner because in this game players score as they go by keeping tallies on the supplied dry-wipe board.

The only placement rule is that colours on a pyramid must always match all adjacent pyramids, and you immediately score for each match-up that that placement creates; so 6 points, for example, for placing a pyramid with red sides adjacent. When any pyramid is adjacent on multiple sides, the adjacent sides all have to match but all score. And pyramids can be placed vertically as well as horizontally, subject to the same adjacency rules. When a pyramid has verticals on top on all four triangles, a pyramid placed atop will create a cube, and the player who completes a cube gets to place out another pyramid on top.

Tho' the 70 pyramids between them offer every possible combination and position of the four colours, there's only one of each pyramid (so, for example, only one pyramid has red triangles on all four sides). Placement inevitably becomes increasingly difficult as the game progresses; when placements demand adjacent matches on all four sides it's very possible that there will be positions where there is no pyramid that will fit because the one qualifying pyramid has already been played.

You can play Pyramology as a casual pyamid placer just looking out for the highest matches available to you each turn but the game equally lends itself to more tactical play. Particularly in a two-player game, players who have good pattern recognition skills will plan their turns ahead, setting themselves up for their next high-scoring pyramid. That's less the case the higher the player count because as you increase the number of players so you have more changes to the board position before you get to take your next turn.

However you play, Pyramology is a satisfying abstract game that you can play in around 30 minutes. Just be warned tho' that there is a lot of self-assembly required before your very first game. Tho' Pyramology has pleasingly chunky plastic pyramids, you must first affix the stickers that distinguish one pyramid from another. This involves carefully positioning each pyramid and folding up the coloured triangle on each side. It's fiddly and harder to do accurately than it is to play the game! We could've done without this added quite lengthy self-assembly dexterity challenge but you only have to do it once and tho' it's a faff the you'll find the game is definitely worth the effort.

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