Product Description

Winner of 26 prestigious awards, including Mensa Select, ASTRA Good Toy Award, Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum, Dr. Toy, Learning Magazine's Teacher's Choice, and Parents' Choice Gold Award, Blokus takes less than a minute to learn but provides a lifetime of challenging fun. Set includes one titanium-colored board with 400 recessed squares to hold pieces in place, 84 game pieces in four bright translucent colors, and an instruction guide.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70 in Toys & Games
• Size: Standard: 13.8 x 13.7 x 2.2 inches
• Brand: Educational Insights
• Model: 2995
• Released on: 2007-05-01
• Dimensions: 14.00" h x 2.00" w x 14.00" l, 2.60 pounds

Features

• The most awarded game of the 21st century
• Promotes healthy brain activity; winner of 20+ prestigious awards, including Mensa Select
• Features bright colors and simple rules; ideal for ages 5 and up
• Game ends when one person places all their pieces, or when there are no possible moves
• Includes 400 - piece game board with raised edges, 84 colored playing pieces, and instruction guide

Amazon.com Product Description
Fun for both kids and adults, Blokus is a strategy board game that challenges spatial thinking. Bright colors and simple rules make it ideal for ages five and up, but adults will certainly be engrossed by this unique and challenging game.

Not Your Average Board Game
Blokus encourages creative thinking and has received a Mensa award for promoting healthy brain activity. The goal of this game is for players to fit all of their pieces onto the board. When placing a piece it may not lie adjacent to the player's other pieces, but must be placed touching at least one corner of their pieces already on the board. The player who gets rid of all of their tiles first is the winner and strategic thinking helps as you block moves from your opponent. Blokus sometimes comes to an end because there are no more possible moves.

Four players make this abstract game especially fast and exciting; however, it can be just as fun for two or three players. Blokus has come up with a number of different ways to play the game to make it more thrilling when playing with less than four players. Draft Blokus allows a player to use more than one color and Reverse Blokus reverses the entire game so that the person who places the least amount of tiles on the board is the winner. It can even be played in a solitaire version when one player attempts to place all of their pieces in a single sitting. A game of Blokus typically lasts a 30 minutes. As a practical feature, raised edges on the board help keep the tiles in place and allow convenient clean-up. This game includes 84 pieces in four vibrant colors, an instruction guide, and one gameboard with 400 squares.

Blokus is simple to understand, but the game's complexity is revealed shortly after everyone begins to play. It can be addictive, even for those not normally into abstract games. Blokus is a catalyst for spatial thinking, as players form images in their mind before placing the pieces on the board. Children and adults can play together for hours of competitive family fun. As Europe's 2003 Game of the Year, Blokus is adored by many and even played in professional tournaments.

What's in the Box
84 pieces in four colors, gameboard with 400 squares, and an instruction guide.

Once a piece has been placed on the board it can't be moved, so plan your moves carefully.

Adding to the game's challenges, each new piece must touch at least one other piece of the same color, but only at the corners.

Customer Reviews

Great Fun and Educational Too!
I originally bought this game for my classroom to help my students develop thinking skills. When it first arrived, I took the game home to figure out how to play it before introducing it to my students--and I was hooked! My own children are ages 10 and 11 and they love the game (we are buying a game for home), but I teach students up to age 18 and they enjoy the game just as much. Educationally, it helps younger students develop a better understanding of spatial relations and planning ahead. For older students (and adults) it helps to develop various strategy skills.

Unlike most educational games, the rules are simple and once you've played it through one time (or watched it through one time) all your effort can go into plotting your moves. The game doesn't run out of possibilities, either; every game is different, even if you play with the same people over and over.

As an educator, parent, and game enthusiast, this was money well spent.

Here's how to play 2-player and 3-player
If you skip over 5-star praising reviews, you'll find from the 4-star ones that you really need all 4 people to enjoy this game. With 2 or 3 players, the end of the game is always like this: player 1 wins, players 2 and 3 end up with one piece each that they can lay down if you let them finish the last round. You can call it a tie or you can call it "1st player wins", either way this is not a lot of fun.

Don't get upset though. There is a way to make it fun for 2 and 3 players. The creators didn't think hard enough; but you can easily mod the board, and all you need is a thin permanent marker (like Sharpie).

The general idea is to reduce the number of squares on the board so that players would run out of board space before they run out of pieces on hand.

So you take a marker, and you draw a line one square away from each of the four edges so that the 20x20 board becomes an 18x18 board. This is your 3-player board. When in 3-player, players are not allowed to place their pieces in the 1-square frame you just drew.

For 2 players, make another frame, this time 1 square away from the already reduced 3-player board. So you end up with a 16x16 board that is perfect for 2-player. Believe it or not, you can still get a tie on this board, but very rarely, and both players need to be quite creative and need some luck to get to a tie.

Another 2-player variation is that each player plays for 2 of the 4 colors (for example, player 1 for green and red, and player 2 for yellow and blue). Players still take turns and lay down one piece at a time, but you choose which of the 2 colors to play with when it's your turn. This 2x2 game is quite hard. Every time I play this variation it makes me feel my brain is about to explode (because there are too many choices and you only have one turn at a time!). I recommend trying this variation when both players already have enough experience with the regular game.

our favorite game!
A friend, who knows we love games in our family, bought us this. Well, within a day we all were hooked. my 5 year old and 12 year old can play with my husband and me and we all are challenged and have a blast! i bought a set to bring to our family vacation home, and my sister in law and i were up until midnight every nite for a week playing this game with whomever we could snag to play it with us!! even really little kids have fun just playing with the pieces, not actually playing the game. the only caveat I have is DON'T LOSE ANY PIECES!!!!! all of the pieces are critical to the game.. that is a real challenge in our household!!