The India Game Developer Conference last week saw many games getting announced, yet one of the titles that truly captured our attention was Mystic Pillars. Made by Indian studio Holy Cow Productions, the game has actually been available for iOS for a couple of weeks already, and now it is set to make the jump to Android. Check out its trailer below:
The gameplay of Mystic Pillars is based on Mancala, a board game from Africa. Your task is to move diamonds around a set of pillars the recreate the pattern that’s given to you in the top right corner of your screen.
The real challenge here is, you only have a limited number of moves to work with each level, and even though it took a little bit of time to get used to, we eventually found ourselves getting into a satisfying rhythm – despite the increasing complexity added across the 100 stages.
Another thing worth mentioning is that this isn’t a free-to-play game. Instead, it’s a premium app priced at $3.99 (Rs 280) on the App Store and the Android version will allegedly cost the same. This is indeed not a very common monetization model for a puzzle game, especially in India. However, the developer has tried to justify this price by emphasizing that a lot of effort has been put into the presentation.
And it truly shows. The game includes many cutscenes that are fully voice-acted with several languages supported. The story is not just a half-baked effort that’s put there only as a poor excuse to get you to do what you do either. It’s an extensive, well-thought-out tale involving Indian mythology – which is not something we often see in mobile puzzlers.
So if you are bored of cheap freemium puzzle games on mobile and want something more, look forward to Mystic Pillars’ Android launch next month. For more information, follow the Facebook page of the developer!