Game Reviews

Yankai's Triangle review - A simple puzzler with surprising complexity

Star onStar onStar onStar onStar off
Get
Yankai's Triangle review - A simple puzzler with surprising complexity

Developer Kenny Sun's previous game was Circa Infinity, a Matryoshka doll of a platformer that challenged you to leap inward through overlapping circular stages. You can see those elements carry over to Yankai's Triangle, as you zoom out through layers of triangles, but this puzzler's closest comparison isn't Circa Infinity. It's the seemingly endless Desert Golfing.

Much like that game, Yankai's Triangle is a slow burn of a puzzler, spread out over hundreds of distinct levels. All revolve around the same basic concept - rotate triangle to align them correctly - but across those many dozens of stages, it gradually injects new mechanics and ideas to both relaxing and tricky challenges.

Simple trigonometry

Within a minute, you understand how to play Yankai's Triangle. The most basic level presents you with four triangles - a center one with three more aligned with its sides - and you need to rotate the triangles so their colored vertices match. Do so, and those triangles combine, with a solid satisfying chunk. Puzzle solved.

That simple framework is easy enough to play and grasp that you could fall into that same "one more-level" pacing associated with games like Desert Golfing or Super Hexagon. Just a few taps, no pressure, and there's always another level to try.

But then the triangles combine, and the puzzle doesn't end. Instead the stage zooms out, revealing more triangles surrounding that new central triangle. Suddenly Yankai's Triangle reveals there's far more to its mechanics than mindlessly tapping shapes.

Down the rabbit hole

Once other layers of triangles are introduced, the puzzles gain a new level of complexity. Now you can't just link colors without thought; you must consider how the outermost triangles will connect. What colors need to be to exposed so the other triangles will align correctly? Sometimes you'll combine multiple layers, only to find that you can't progress, forcing you to dive back into the smaller triangles and work backwards to solve the puzzle.

But Yankai's Triangle doesn't stop with kaleidoscopic stages. Soon you're dealing with multi-colored vertices, sides with additional colors, marked triangles that spin together, triangles that rotate in unison, stages where the entire screen twists or the background swaps colors, and much more.

By level 300, stages aren't merely just matching colors, as you deal with several mechanics simultaneously. It's this gradual collection of cumulative elements, introduced without fanfare or tutorials, that drives you to keep playing levels after level, triangle after triangle. Learning what those mechanics do through playful experimentation, and then carrying that knowledge onward through the many stages to come, is a big part of the game's appeal.

Yankai's Triangle is a simple facade over a much more complex puzzler. You'll never doing anything more than rotating triangles, for many dozens of stages, but from that basic framework emerges a smartly-designed game heavy with content and ideas.

Yankai's Triangle review - A simple puzzler with surprising complexity

It may take a while for new mechanics to emerge, but sticking with it reveals a tricky puzzler with myriad mechanics to learn
Score
Christian Valentin
Christian Valentin
Christian always had a interest in indie games and loves to give the games that so easily go unnoticed the attention they deserve