Blokus

Before the game, each player chooses one color by any mutually agreeable method. The placement of pieces is governed by one rule: Each new piece must be placed so that it touches at least one other piece of the same color, diagonally, and not adjacently.

The first piece played by any player must cover a corner square. Whenever a player cannot play a piece, his turn is skipped.

If a player can play a piece, he cannot opt not to. Winning the game: Once no players can make any more moves, the player with the most tile segments on the board wins.

Notes: You must use the honor system to determinate whether a player has a move to make. If not, they may skip their turn.

Determining the winner is also left to you, to allow maximum flexibility in creating your own variants.

Some variants are suggested below. Variant Rules: Two player game: Each player uses two colors. Three player game: Each player chooses one color; the players take turns placing pieces for the fourth colors.

These pieces do not contribute to a player's score. 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 uses pieces made up of triangles rather than squares polyiamonds , 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 allowed. Blokus Junior is targeted at younger children.

There are 12 unique pieces. Each player gets two of each kind, 24 in total. The game also comes with a set of sheets with single-player puzzles, which show positions in which the player needs to connect two pieces following standard Blokus rules.

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.

Stefan Kögl created Rumis independently from Bernard Tavitian, and is thus not related. 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.

Released in December , Blokus World Tour was similar to the board game version of Blokus, but also featured 16 AI opponents, music and sound effects, and multiple game modes, including a tour mode, quick play, and Blokus Challenges.

For some time, there was an official online version of Blokus where visitors could play with opponents all over the world.

Mattel suspended the online game on May 18, , stating it did not meet its playability standards. A Gameloft developed version of Blokus was released for iPhone , iPod touch , and iPad in April , featuring the Classic and Duo versions of the game, local and online multiplayer gameplay, and single player tournament mode.

Currently, the officially licensed Blokus app is developed by Magmic , and is available for iPhone , iPod touch , and iPad. This version includes solo play and multiplayer options, integrating the user's Facebook and Game Center friends and allowing them to compete on a tournament leader-board.

There is also some open source software based on the same concept of polyominoes as blokus does, for example Blokish , [11] Blockem , [12] Freebloks [13] or Pentobi [14] for desktop and Freebloks [15] or Blokish [16] for Android smartphones.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Mattel Games. May 20,