Minimalistic puzzle games often get associated with being relaxing and meditative but Siheyuan doesn’t subscribe to that theory. Instead, it has provided me with one of the most ratchetingly tense and fraught puzzle experiences I’ve played in 2023 and its immediately gone into my favourites list.
Siheyuan is Chinese for courtyard and that is where the idea of the game comes from. In the centre of the screen is a courtyard square and various people, or coloured tiles are descending towards the courtyard to worship the central square. Around the edge of the courtyard are outlines of lots of squares in four colours, red, black, white and blue (grue as the game calls it) and those match the tiles. The object of the same is to place the right tiles in the right outlines without backing up all the tiles and causing a game over.
There are a couple of twists here. The first is that the four corridors are colour marked and so only red tiles will spawn from the bottom for example. You’ll need to move the tiles to the right slot but depending on the control scheme you choose you’ll be moving all the tiles in a corridor or axis at the same time. This means you might move one tile into the right slot, but doing so moves something else into an annoying slot and cause you a new problem. Siheyuan is all about mitigating mistakes and knowing which mistake to make because for every bit of progress forward, you’ll make a mistake too. This brings us to yellow tiles that will remove any tile it lands on. Again these move with everything else so line it up and you’ll remove something in the wrong outline. However it can easily just take out a correctly completed tile too and you’ll need to play catch up.
Along side all of this are the modifiers. There are 13 and each of the 13 levels mixes up to 6 of them up. The modifiers in play are cycled through at random and each causes chaos. There’s a monochrome filter, one that sends purple blocks down that clog everything up, one that rains tiles at speed and another that rains only yellow coins. There there are modifiers to the corridor walls that either prevent you moving across corridors, absorb and remove tiles or make them pop out at the opposite end or in a different colour. There are also modifies that only let you move clockwise or anti-clockwise. Whenever these are in play you have to react so quickly and choose the mistakes you want to let through so you can deal with them later.
Single player is all about wrestling down your mistakes and going against the clock for your leaderboard times and getting better scores and increasing the tile speed. Siheyuan is brutal and you’ll go from in control to a pile of tiles in struggleville within 10 seconds. Its part of the games charm and with its reactive soundtrack, you’ll keep coming back for more. If you have puzzle fiend friends though, Siheyuan is playing in 2-4 player co-op mode too where each player controls 1 or 2 corridors. I can just imagine the chaos of shouting to your friends to pass the tiles around and reacting at speed to all the modifiers. Its a real boon that this is available as it makes the game stand out from the crowd in yet another way.
The last way Siheyuan stands out is by offering an axis (standard) or corridor control scheme (focus). Standard mode means moving all top and bottom tiles left and right together whereas focus lets you choose your corridor and move only those tiles. I found standard to be easier to get to grips with although I can see why focus would be best for competitive play.
For just £2.49, Siheyuan is an absolute steal. There is plenty of challenge to get stuck into and if you have friends, plenty of ways to ruin friendships in the pursuit of co-op glory too. Just don’t think that this game will be relaxing or zen like. It is stressful. Beautiful, but stressful and oh so satisfying when you get it right.
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