Blokus

Blokus

Players	2–4
Age range	5 +
Setup time	< 1 minute
Playing time	20 - 30 minutes
Random chance	None
Skill(s) required	Strategic thought

Blokus (pronounced like "block us") is an abstract strategy board game for two to four players, invented by Bernard Tavitian and first released in 2000 by Sekkoïa, a French company. It has won several awards, including the Mensa Select award and the 2004 Teacher's Choice Award.

Gameplay

The shapes of the 21 Blokus tiles.

The game is played on a square board divided into 20 rows and 20 columns, for a total of 400 squares. There are a total of 84 game tiles, organized into 21 shapes in each of four colors: blue, yellow, red, and green. The 21 shapes are based on free polyominoes of from one to five squares (one monomino, one domino, two trominoes/triominoes, five tetrominoes, and 12 pentominoes).

The standard rules of play for all variations of the game are as follows:

• Order of play is based on color, with blue going first, followed by yellow, red, and green.
• The first piece played of each color is placed in one of the board's four corners. Each new piece played must be placed so that it touches at least one piece of the same color, with only corner-to-corner contact allowed—edges cannot touch. However, edge-to-edge contact is allowed when two pieces of different color are involved.
• When a player cannot place a piece, he or she passes, and play continues as normal. The game ends when no one can place a piece.

When a game ends, the score is based on the number of squares in each player's unplayed pieces; a player loses one point for each square (e.g. a tetromino is worth -4 points). If a player played all of his or her pieces, he or she gets a bonus score of +20 points if the last piece played was a monomino, +15 points otherwise.

Two-player variant

In two-player games, each player takes two colors, usually starting in opposite corners. This allows further strategy, as a player can sacrifice one of their colors in order to strengthen the position of their other color in order to try to play all the pieces of that color and win the bonus score.

It is also possible to play with three players; in this case each player in turn makes moves with the fourth colour. This is not a perfect solution to three-way games, however, because the player diagonally opposite the fourth (multiplayer) colour has an advantage.^{[citation needed]} (A better solution is the Trigon version of the game—see below.)

Expansions and spinoffs

Sekkoïa and its distributors manufacture three additional versions of the game.

Blokus Duo/Travel Blokus

Blokus Duo is for two players only, and uses a smaller (14×14) board; the piece colors are purple and orange. The two starting squares are placed, not in the corner (as in the original Blokus game) but nearer to the centre. This makes a crucial difference in the flavour of the game, because players' pieces may (and usually do) touch after the first move. Even more than with the original game, Blokus Duo is an offence-centred game; it is also a much purer strategy game than the four-player game, since one is not in danger of getting ganged up on by three other players (as sometimes happens with the four-player version).

Blokus Trigon

Blokus Trigon uses pieces made up of triangles rather than squares, and is played on a hexagonal board, a version optimized for three players but can be played with 2,3,or 4 players. The same rules apply, meaning that 2 edges cannot touch; however, as it is isometric, a corner touching an edge is possible.

Blokus Giant

Blokus Giant is a larger version, with the game board being about 570 mm (22 in) square.

Rumis/Blokus 3D

Blokus 3D, originally marketed in a Mayan theme as Rumis, uses pieces made up of unit cubes, in every permutation of three and four cubes in three dimensions. There is also a major rule change; instead of being required to place pieces so they touch corner-to-corner, a piece must be placed such that it touches a face of another piece of the same color. Also, a player placing a piece cannot do so if it would create any empty space underneath any part of the piece. The object is to build one of four different structures, each with its own placement limitations: the Tower, Wall, Steps, and Pyramid. Players attempt to place their blocks such that at the end of the game, when the structure is viewed from above, their color has the most squares showing.

Video games

Funkitron developed a PC casual game version of Blokus called Blokus World Tour. Released in December 2007, World Tour was faithful to the board game version of Blokus while adding 16 playable characters, music and sound effects, and multiple game modes including a tour mode, quick play, and Blokus Challenges.

There is also an online version of Blokus at Blokus Online, where visitors may play with opponents all over the world, with four game mode types, Blokus Original, Blokus Trigon (2 players, four colours only), Blokus Duo, and Blokus 3D.

There are two rooms in the online version depending on your skill level. The competition room allows players to earn points and track their win/loss records. The training room is a great place to learn to play the game, with no effect on your overall stats.

The PlayStation Portable also has Blokus Portable: Steambot Championship, which features characters from Steambot Chronicles playing the Classic, Travel, and Duo versions of the game.

A Gameloft developed version of Blokus was released for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad in April 2010, featuring the Classic and Duo versions of the game, local and online multiplayer gameplay, and single player tournament mode.

There is also some open source software based on the same concept of polyominoes as blokus does, for example Blokish, Blockem or Pentobi for desktop and Blokish Android for smartphone.

See also

• Polyomino
• Tetromino

External links

• Official website
• Australian distributor's home page for Blokus
• Blokus, the Blokus series and an unofficial list of Blokus piece names at BoardGameGeek
• Review of Blokus, Blokus Trigon and Blokus Duo at Blokus-Review.com
• Review of Blokus at TheGamesJournal.com
• Discussion of notation system for Blokus