Gamefinds: Violarium

‘@Play‘ is a frequently-appearing column which discusses the history, present, and future of the roguelike dungeon exploring genre. Violarium is another of that prolific genre of puzzle game, the grid- and turn-based series of progressively-harder problems where you learn the rules as you go, and new complications turn up periodically, until suddenly they’re all done and you’re looking at the credits. At the beginning Often this style of game takes the form of a block-pusher, but not this time. Each puzzle here is made of a number of dice blocks, their pips representing digits up to six. You must trigger each of the blocks in order: the 1, the 2, the 3 and then the 4 (and the 5 and 6 too, if they’re present). Each must be triggered once, and not more than once, or they all reset and you have to start it over. You trigger a block partly by standing next to it, but that’s not the only requirement. Your facing matters too, but your character can only face left or right, and can’t turn in…