Darkwaar is an experiment in creating and publishing small playable ideas regularly.
Today's puzzle
Today's Darkwaar is Pillarcut.
A compact 5×5 low-poly diorama sits in a fixed isometric view. Heights are discrete (0–2). Warm pillars can be raised or lowered while you stand on or beside them, spending a shared reshape budget. You may step onto a neighboring tile when the height difference is at most one.
Pillarcut explores a more specialized visual direction for the series: orthographic isometric depth, readable height silhouettes, and mobile-first portrait framing without camera scrolling.
How to play
The whole board stays on screen.
- Tap a highlighted neighbor to step; desktop clicks mirror taps
- Tap a warm pillar when you stand on it or beside it to select it
- Tap Raise or Lower to change its height by one (costs budget)
- Stairs (height difference of one) are legal; cliffs (difference greater than one) are refused
- Reach the orange ring on the high terrace
- Undo and Restart are always available; Next unlocks after a win
Four short levels — Tutorial, Twin Pillars, Narrow Cut, and Sequence — teach reshape-then-climb with rising budget tension.
Screenshots
Height as the lever
Earlier Darkwaar boards often drew abstract grids. Pillarcut keeps the puzzle on a true orthographic isometric stage. The lever is not a single switch: you spend a limited budget to reshape warm pillars, then climb the stairs you made.
The camera never pans or zooms. The whole terrace stays readable on a phone. That constraint is the experiment as much as the budget itself.
