Blokus
 | |
| Players | 2–4 |
|---|---|
| Setup time | < 1 minute |
| Playing time | 20 - 30 minutes |
| Chance | None |
| Age range | 5 + |
| Skills | Strategic thought |
Blokus is an abstract strategy board game for two to four players, invented by Bernard Tavitian and first released in 2000 by Sekkoia, a French company. It has won several awards, including the Mensa Select award and the 2004 Teacher's Choice Award. Tavitian, an engineer and artist, was inspired to create the game while trying to find an appropriate frame for a painting of an orchestra made up of geometric figures.[citation needed]
Gameplay
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:[1]
- 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.
- 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.[1]
Strategy
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The novice typically tries to seal off an area for themselves to reduce the area the opponents can access. But since pieces only are connected via their corners, another player can easily pass through. It is therefore difficult to cut off other people from accessing 'your' area. Instead, the successful tactic is to try to expand into as many areas on the board as possible. In other words, game strategy is dominated by offence rather than defence. Blocking is possible to an extent by cutting off an opponents access to the corners of their pieces using yours in strategic ways.
Smaller tiles are very useful during the later stages of the game: the smaller a piece is, the better it is at occupying the holes in the tiles of other colours, and thus opening up new areas of the board for expansion.
In two-players games, each player takes two colors, 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 and play all the pieces of that color and win the bonus score.
The picture to the right actually shows blue pieces laid down illegally. No edges of the same color piece are allowed to touch, yet there are two blue pieces with edges flush to one another in the image.
Expansions and spinoffs
Sekkoia and its distributors manufacture three additional versions of the game.
Blokus Duo/Travel Blokus
"Blokus Duo" uses a smaller (14×14) board, two of which are marked as the starting squares, and supports only two players. Each player chooses one color (purple, orange), and the order of play is determined by any mutually agreeable method. The first piece played by any player must cover the starting squares.
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.
"Blokus Giant"
"Blokus Giant" is a larger version, with the game board being about 2' (60 cm) square.
Video games
Funkitron developed a PC casual game version of Blokus called Blokus World Tour. Released in Dec. 2007, World Tour was faithful to the board game version of Blokus while adding 16 playable charcters, music and sound effects, and multiple game modes including a tour mode, quick play, and Blokus Challenges..[2]
Pronunciation
According to Sekkoïa, the correct pronunciation of "Blokus" is with a "soft o" (as in "block"), reflecting the fact that blocking is part of the game's strategy.[3]
References
- ^ a b http://www.blokus.com/en/regles_plateau.html
- ^ Saltzman, Marc (2007-12-14). "Blokus World Tour Review". Gamezebo.com. Retrieved 2007-12-22.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ http://www.blokus.com/en/how_to_prononce.htm
External links
- Official website, with online Blokus games
- U.S. distributor's home page for Blokus
- Blokus, the Blokus series and an unofficial list of Blokus piece names at BoardGameGeek
- Review of Blokus at TheGamesJournal.com