Pillar Valley
Version: GIT Web: https://github.com/ Evanbacon/pillar-valley
The Pillar Valley author declares on its Github front page that, “It’s time to immerse ourselves in a suave world of zen!” So, we took the trendy mobile game for a test ride in a desktop web browser and found it utterly fun, captivating and worth spending more than a few minutes of your time playing.
Pillar Valley is a minimalist game that features abstract vector objects – there’s no bitmap artwork on show. The game features tall pillars that you need to land a revolving tablet on. Essentially, it’s a challenge that involves good reaction times. You’re given three attempts for each pillar because the tablet is constantly shrinking and it can manage only three rounds before it disappears. The tablet size, the revolving radius and the rolling direction randomly change, and the more pillars you complete, the harder it gets.
The game has a range of prizes, which pop up once you complete a challenge (play some rounds, set a record and so on). Pillars are infinite, and the game is virtually endless. If you fail, it takes you to the beginning and displays your highscore in the top-left corner.
Pillar Valley was originally intended to run on Android and IOS, and this can be easily seen in the source tree. However, because the game was made using the Three.js and Expo frameworks, it’s also possible to run a local server. Make sure you have Yarn installed (look it up in your package manager), grab the code and run $ yarn in the ‘client’ subdirectory. That will install all required dependencies, including Expo. After that, run $ expo start and give it some time to compile the code and fire up the local server. Once that’s done, the game should be available at http://localhost:19006 or similar port. Play it with no limitations, ads or other annoyances right on your desktop Linux machine!