In The Pillar: Puzzle Escape, You Only Have to Complete Half the Game to Earn the Platinum Trophy

I’ve unlocked some super easy Platinum Trophies in my day. A Hero and a Garden, for example, has a Plat that you can probably knock out in two hours. Carto‘s Plat probably requires five to eight hours. I’m no stranger to easy Platinum Trophies.

With The Pillar: Puzzle Escape, however, you don’t even have to complete the game to unlock the Platinum Trophy. All of the Trophies can be earned in the first four stages.

I have a massive collection of PlayStation Trophies, and I’ve actually not seen this before. Most games — all of the games I can think of off the top of my head, in fact — have at least one Trophy that requires you to finish the game. Not so with The Pillar.

In The Pillar: Puzzle Escape, there is a Trophy for completing the intro, then there’s a Trophy for completing each of the next four levels. Beyond that, there are Trophies for completing each of those same four levels with 70% or better (this is the percentage of puzzles you were able to complete without messing up), and an additional set of Trophies for collecting all of the art pieces in each of those stages.

So that’s one Trophy for the intro, and three Trophies each for the next four stages. I initially assumed this meant that the fourth stage was the final stage. But the game keeps going after that. In fact, there are three full stages beyond this, and they’re probably the three hardest stages in the game.

I played the game on PS4, so I checked with the other versions, and as it turns out, the Xbox One version has the exact same list (though they’re called Achievements instead of Trophies). The Steam version, however, has a more complete list.

I get the feeling that this was a mistake. It makes no sense that they would have stopped adding Achievements halfway through the game — especially when the Steam version has Achievements for all seven stages (eight if you include the intro).

I’m not sure what happened here, but if you want a super easy Platinum Trophy, you can pick up The Pillar: Puzzle Escape. You won’t even have to complete the game to get your Plat. I’ve spent ten bucks on far worse things than this.