Troubling Weather Ahead
STRATO
Designer: Sophia Wagner | Publisher: Helvetiq
Stormy weather ahead, I hope you packed your coat. Strato is a solo puzzle game from Helvetiq, who are known for small and delightful boxes of pocket-sized games and puzzles. Strato is that again – another neat box containing very little but a stack of satisfyingly shaped long, thin cards and a rulebook.
In this game, which despite some charming artwork is largely without a strong theme, you set up and solve card puzzles centred around using different powers to reorganise one or more rows of cards into a target configuration. There’s a set of ten increasingly difficult levels, each of which uses some number of card types, which are based on different weather conditions. On your turn you simply play a card, use its effect, then draw a new card, it couldn’t be simpler. The complexity arises from the different effects of each weather. For example, the rain card pushes others in the row closer to the centre, while the lightning effect lets you swap cards between the multiple card rows of some of the later, more challenging, puzzles.