Solomids
| Solomids | ||
|---|---|---|
| Alex Ottenstein | ||
| A solo game of stacking, sliding, and swapping | ||
| Players: | 1 | |
| Length: | Long | |
| Complexity: | Complex | |
| Trios per color: | 3 | |
| Number of colors: | 5 | |
| Setup time: | 2 min | |
| Playing time: | 5 - 30 | |
| Random chance: | Some | |
| Theme: | Politics | |
| Status: Complete (v1.0), Year released: 2016 | ||
Solomids is a 1-player game in which a player attempts to take a randomly-filled board and organize the pieces into trees. The more moves you make, the greater your freedom of movement.
Flavor text:
‘So you’re ready to fly in my forces?’ the Emperor said, sliding a scrambled Solomids setup across the table. ’First you must prove your pyramidian prowess. Win without swapping and you shall command an entire cavalry! A one-swap victory, and you’ll captain your own ship; swap two and it’s off to cadet school for you! But lose…’
Equipment[edit | edit source]
- Board: a 5×10 grid
- 45 pyramids total, 3 trios of 5 different colors:
Goal[edit | edit source]
Build a complete 3House set, by banking one small-medium-large stack of the same color (called a tree or tree-trio) at a time, attempting to form three complete ‘rainbow stashes’ (five tree-trios, one of every color – making 15 pyramids in each rainbow stash).
Setup[edit | edit source]
Put down a 5x10 grid. Leave the top row of the grid empty. Mix all 45 pyramids into a hat. Draw one piece at a time and place it in the first space of the second row, then the next space of that row, then the next, until the row is filled. In this manner, add 8 more rows of 5 pieces below the first (for 9 total rows of pyramids), neatly aligned so they also form 5 columns. This grid of 45 pyramids, along with the ‘invisible’ first row (which should be the farthest from you), creates the playing area of 50 total spaces.
Note: Setup can be performed using the steps below for a mechanically randomized setup, or players can use a fan-made randomizer web page.
When setting up, follow these two rules:
- If at any time drawing pieces you pull the same exact piece – color and size – consecutively, redraw the repeated piece until it’s different.
- As you draw the last two pieces for each row, ensure each row contains at least one of each sized piece or redraw until it does.
Lastly, establish an area off to the side that functions to hold completed tree-trios, known as the bank.
Gameplay[edit | edit source]
There are three ways to move pieces in the playing area – Stacking, Sliding, and Swapping.
Stacking: You can move pieces orthogonally to stack smaller pieces on top of the next size larger as long as both pieces are the same color. Stacked small-medium combos can be further stacked on top of a large piece of the same color, forming a tree-trio. As pieces get stacked, gaps will form on the board. You can jump over these gaps orthogonally, but you can't jump over other pieces.
Once stacked, pieces cannot be unstacked, however if a small-medium stack of any color is across/next to a medium-large stack of the same color, the small piece can be moved to the top of the medium-large combo to form a trio. The same is true for a medium-large stack across from/next to a single large piece – the medium piece can be moved to the other large piece of like color. Note this also means you may move small or small-medium combos off of completed trees still in play, provided you have the proper color and size piece available adjacently, but:
- You can never stack diagonally or jump other pieces
- You can never stack pieces of the same size
- You can never stack pieces of different color
- You can never stack a small directly on top of a large
- You can never ‘nest’ pieces by placing larger on top of smaller
Sliding: Strictly viewing the playing area as five columns, at any time, you may close any column gap by sliding the piece directly below the gap all the way forward until it is touching the pyramid above the gap (or touching the top edge of the board). All pieces that are consecutively ‘touching’ behind it must also move along behind it. Gaps can never be closed by moving pieces left, right, backwards or diagonally, and pieces further back in the same column that are separated by more gaps do not move at all unless you choose to slide them in a separate move. The ‘invisible’ first row is available at any time as an extra space to slide pieces into.
Example Slide:
Swapping: Besides stacking and sliding, the only other type of movement is the swap, where you trade the piece(s) in any one occupied space with the piece(s) of any other occupied space in play. You do not start the game with any swaps, but can earn up to two by banking rainbow stashes, as described next.
Banking[edit | edit source]
If you are able to form a tree-trio, at any time you may remove it from the playing area and add it to the bank, though it’s not always wise to immediately do so. Once you have built up a complete rainbow stash (five tree-trios, one of every color) in the banking area, you earn one swap which you may use at any time. With three rainbow stashes in the game, there are a maximum of two attainable swaps, so use them wisely. Note that tree-trios never need to be banked until the player chooses to do so, and any pieces that have been banked cannot be returned to the playing field.
One rainbow stash (seen above) in the bank grants the player one Swap move.
Scoring[edit | edit source]
A commonly-used scoring method is as follows:
- Count the number of monochrome trios you were able to remove from the board. Each such trio is worth one point.
- Add one point for each swap you did not need to use.
Under this system, 15 is considered a winning score, while the maximum possible score is 17.
In terms of the game's theme:
| Score | Result |
| 17 points | Perfect score. You shall command an entire cavalry. |
| 16 points | Impressive. You shall captain your own ship. |
| 15 points | Success. You are accepted into the cadet school. |
| ≤ 14 points | You have failed the test. |
Endgame[edit | edit source]
If three rainbow stashes have been deposited into the bank, forming a perfect 3house set, you win! If at any time you cannot stack, slide or swap, the game is over.
External Links[edit | edit source]
| Featured in Pyramid Arcade Bonus Cards |
|---|
| Aquarius Rising · Blam! · Carrots and Broccoli · Freeze Tag |
| Gnostica · Icehouse · Penguin Soccer · Pyramid Ball |
| RAMbots · Skurðir · Solomids · Zendo |