Hello,
Spuring off from the columns functionality in Collapsed Topics I have created a lightweight topic based format that just implements the ability to arrange the topics in columns between one and four. Please see:
https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_columns
The 2.4 version is in 'Beta' until I get some feedback that it is stable. Please kindly test and let me know your thoughts here.
Cheers,
Gareth