The Four Symbols

Sometimes you grab a game from an old collection and have no idea what to expect. The Four Symbols is just such a case — a loud title, no explanation, and you're already asking yourself, what the hell is this anyway.

It's a puzzle, specifically a logic game from the early nineties that someone released onto disk without fanfare and without sound. You've got four symbols — circles, squares, triangles, stars — and your task is simple: arrange them so they meet the given rules. Each level tells you what's allowed and what isn't. This symbol can't go next to that one, that one has to be in the corner. Combinatorics that an eighty-year-old grandma could handle, but which will still drive you absolutely insane if you don't think it through.

The controls are primitive and that's exactly the beauty of it — you click on symbols, drag them around the grid, and instantly see if it's right. The game doesn't kick you out, it just tells you it doesn't work. No animations, no sounds, just green or red. After a few levels you realize that logic is the whole window into the problem — if you get it, it's just a matter of time. If you don't get it at all, you'll end up with paper and pencil.

The Four Symbols is a nameless, anonymous thing that nobody would pick up today. It lacks charm, story, a reason why it should interest you. It's pure game mechanics without the wrapping — and that's precisely why you sometimes find it in the depths of retro archives. It's aged without grace, but nobody really noticed it when it was new either.

If you like puzzles where it's all about pure thinking without graphical fanfare, and if it won't annoy you that nothing moves and nothing makes a sound, you'll dig it. You can try it in the browser as a mad little break between something more gripping. But don't expect anything more from it — logic and silence.