Pyramid Magic

Pyramid Magic is a 1991 puzzle game for the Sega Mega Drive that nobody in Europe saw at the time. It was released only in Japan, and not even on a cartridge: it was distributed through Game Toshokan, the download library Sega ran over a telephone line. No modem, no game. It resurfaced only much later, when Sega included it in the collection on the Mega Drive Mini.

You play a young explorer hunting for treasure buried deep inside a pyramid. Each chamber is a self-contained puzzle containing blocks, treasure chests and an exit guarded by a ghost who will not let you through until the room's condition is met. Blocks can be kicked apart or picked up and carried, and carrying is the key idea. With a block in your arms you can squeeze through openings that would otherwise be closed to you, which makes the block simultaneously an obstacle, a resource and a tool.

There are around thirty-five stages and they escalate at a pleasant rate. Early rooms are about the order in which you break things; later ones are about where you park a block in advance, because you will need it two screens further on. A bad decision does not kill you outright, it quietly closes a route, and you only realise some time afterwards that you are working on an unsolvable position.

This is a small, quiet game with no story and no spectacle, technically modest even by Mega Drive standards. Anyone hoping for action will be disappointed. Anyone who likes puzzles decided by thinking rather than by finger speed gets an honest, well-built set of problems worth returning to one chamber at a time.

On oldgame.cz you can start Pyramid Magic straight in the browser, with nothing to install.