Game Review: Nishiki

Mahjong solitaire, while popular, can mostly be played through a computer; creating any layout by hand with actual tiles is way too much work. The other alternative is the flatter and wider playing cards, where there can be more flexibility with what categories are considered matching. While an intro of this kind is not a great way to start this review, it's hard not to meander like this if the game in question has a rather oriental flair in its inception: it was created with the use of Hanafuda cards in mind.

Open information solitaires are a common breed whether historical and invented. Old games of this kind has the goal of building up cards by suit on foundations, while for this specific review it deals with a mix of building and matching, with the goal of clearing the layout. With an English name of Brocade, it's hard not to weeb it up and christen it with the closest Japanese term: nishiki (錦). The game is played with Hanafuda cards in mind, but you can strip a rank from a deck of cards, and lay them out in a weave of alternating horizontal and vertical cards, as can be seen in this online player.

Play involves moving cards with at least one free short edge and placing them onto cards with any free side. A card can only be placed onto another card of the same season(rank by analogy) and the stack stays until all four cards of its season are placed onto it and is immediately removed as soon as possible. This means that there can only be one stack of a season at a time and for the game's purpose single cards are not stacks. Cards and stacks can only be moved and removed if it does not split the layout into islands. Removing all twelve stacks wins the game.

Nishiki uses an interesting removal mechanism, where immediate and delayed removals coexist and how a wrong removal means an immovable pillar that leaves the game hanging. The requirement for the layout to remain in one piece gives this game a strategic aspect: do I build this one now or wait? The question is a rather moot one; you must start a pile on the edge and plan for it not to become a roadblock.

An interesting concept that gives way to unique play and requires new approaches to foresight, Nishiki mixes an overt layout and playable card limits in a different way.