roobret: Drystone

You have walked past a field wall and wondered how it stays up with no mortar. Batter Frame lets you find out by rebuilding one. Every level is a gap: a fallen stretch of a real regional wall. The standing ends are still there, the batter frames are set up at each end, and the stones that fell lie in a pile. You rebuild the gap course by course, and the game holds you to the rules a walling instructor would: - The biggest stones go in the foundation. - Every stone goes in lengthways, into the wall, never along the face. - One on two, two on one: each stone crosses the joint below it. - A stone resting on a single point rocks, and you have to set it again. - The face follows the batter line, so rough ends don't go outward. - Hearting is packed tight between the two faces, by tapping. - At half height a through-stone ties both faces together. - The cope goes on top, and only at the very end. When the cope is on, the wall check cuts a cross-section through your work. It shows the batter, the hearting and the throughs, flags every running joint on the face and gives the wall one to three stars. Six walling regions, eight gaps each, with harder walls further along: Yorkshire Dales limestone, Cotswold oolite, the Galloway single dyke, western Victoria's basalt walls, Otago schist and New England fieldstone. Each one builds differently. Cotswold stone lies in thin courses, Galloway goes single above the throughs with no hearting, Otago's slabs come off the pile turned the wrong way, and New England fieldstone gives you no spares. The Stone Yard keeps an illustrated card for every rule and regional style, and each card unlocks the first time you run into it. There's a fresh daily gap every morning, and a Sightings log where you can photograph real walls on your walks and file them under their style. There's no timer and there are no lives. It's meant to be calm. No ads, no accounts, no purchases, and it all works offline.