How to play

pillarz is a two-player game of climbing. You each command two pawns on a small grid of stone. Every turn you take one step and lay one block - and the first player to stand on the third level wins.

A full game takes a few minutes. The rules fit on this page.

The goal

Move one of your pawns onto a tower that is three levels high. That's it - the instant a pawn steps onto the third level, the game is over and you win.

Everything else - where you move, what you build - is in service of getting one of your pawns up there first, while keeping your opponent from doing the same.

The board

The board is a 5 × 5 grid of tiles. Tiles start flat, but they can be built up, one level at a time, into towers up to three levels tall.

You have two pawns; so does your opponent. Yours are one colour, theirs another. There are no other pieces and no hidden information - the whole board is in front of you.

A turn: move, then build

Every turn has exactly two parts, always in this order:

Move one of your two pawns to a neighbouring square.
Build - raise a square next to that pawn by one level.

You must do both, and you can't skip either. After you build, it's your opponent's turn.

One turn: move a pawn one square, then build a block on a neighbouring square.

Moving

A pawn moves to any of the eight squares around it - straight or diagonal - as long as:

The square is empty (no pawn already stands there), and
It is not capped (see below), and
It is at most one level higher than where the pawn stands now.

You can climb up only one level at a time, but you can step down as many levels as you like in a single move. Height is easy to gain and easy to lose.

Building

Right after moving, you add a block to a square next to the pawn you just moved - one of its eight neighbours. Building raises that square by one level.

A square built up from the third level gets a cap - a dome on level four. Capped squares are permanently out of play: no pawn can ever stand on them and nothing more can be built there. Caps are how you wall off routes and deny the top to your opponent.

Build on a third-level tower and it gets a cap - a dome no pawn can climb.

Winning

There are two ways to win:

Reach the top. Move a pawn onto a third-level tower.
Trap your opponent. If, on their turn, your opponent has no legal move with either pawn, they lose immediately.

Reach the top: step a pawn onto a third-level tower to win.

Blocking matters as much as climbing. A well-placed build can raise a wall your opponent can't cross, or cap the very tower they were about to step onto.

The clock

Each player has a countdown clock that runs only on their own turn. Choose a time control before the game. If your clock reaches zero, you lose - so keep an eye on it, especially in a close endgame.

That's the whole game. The best way to learn it is to play - start a match against the computer and climb.