The Pyramid is a collaborative digital puzzle game created by Lee Ballan, an Israeli game designer.
Format
Style of Play: light puzzle hunt
Required Equipment: computer with internet connection
This game required the use of a collaborative drawing app (and one was provided). A Google Sheet felt essential in the late game, although it would have ruined the early game.
Recommended Team Size: 3-6
Play Time: 1-2 hours (but the game allots 12 hours, so there is no risk of running out of time)
Price: 40 NIS to 50 NIS (about $11.50 to $14.50) per player, depending on the number of players
Booking: purchase the game and play it at your leisure
Description
The Pyramid was a browser-based point-and-click light puzzle hunt with a heavy focus on teamwork and partial information. This game requires at least 3 people on different computers to play.
Hivemind Review Scale
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Theresa W’s Reaction
The Pyramid was a puzzle-heavy online experience that delivered a fun, multiplayer endeavor. The game was unique in how there were three ‘paths’ that needed to work together in order to solve every single puzzle. The game had our entire team engaged and energetic throughout, and kept every one of our 6 players (2 players per team) busy. There was one point where the difficulty took a significant jump and caught our team off guard. This specific puzzle would have benefited from slightly better cluing, but it was a very clever puzzle nonetheless. Every puzzle had very satisfying solves, with one including a truly hilarious moment. There was no flashy interface, yet The Pyramid made up for it in the quality of puzzles and interactions.
Brett Kuehner’s Reaction
- + Three-team structure that uses player interaction and coordination to boost the fun and energy of the game
- + Well-designed puzzles with good variety and clear solutions. Even before entering an answer in the website, we knew it would be correct.
- + Easy to use website interface
- + Several sections use humor effectively, and one in particular was hilarious
- – One puzzle was a very sharp increase in difficulty, leading us to be unsure as to how deep it went, and we needed hints to get back on track
- – Some sections forbid certain tools; others seem to almost require them. The rules need to be clarified in several places.
- + Unusual (but good) hint system that allows players to choose hints for the particular phase of the puzzle they are stuck on, although it could sometimes be hard to determine exactly which hint would be the right one to take.
Sarah Mendez’s Reaction
I love love love the concept of each player having a unique set of information to contribute to an overall puzzling experience, and The Pyramid provides a well-designed implementation. The puzzles reasonably increase in difficulty throughout (with one significant leap that required outside knowledge). They cycle through a fun variety of genres that even incorporate some solid laughs. Caveats: the suggested shared drawing app has a bit of a learning curve, the clue system penalizes you for misjudging which clue you need, and the story doesn’t make much sense. I’d put this experience on par with many boxed games, so if the price aligned more closely with those, I’d recommend this any time… not only during a pandemic.
David Spira’s Reaction
The Pyramid was “Communication Puzzle: The Game.” With the players split into three groups, all of the puzzles revolved around everyone having partial information. I eat up these kinds of challenges in real life, and I felt like they translated well into online play.
As much as I enjoyed the puzzles, The Pyramid suffered from the incredible difficulty spike in the second-to-last puzzle (which was also my favorite puzzle of the entire game). With a couple of puzzles before it that revved up the challenge level, the transition to extra spicy could work smoothly. Another opportunity for improvement was the hint system… which had point penalties that felt a bit icky, since we couldn’t really tell which hint we needed to view.
Overall, I loved The Pyramid. There was room to improve the UI and difficulty curve, but I would eagerly play a sequel in or out of quarantine.
Disclosure: The Pyramid provided the Hivemind reviewers with a complimentary play.