Rumis ticks so many boxes

I recently taught my son Rumis, a game he has played with as a set of blocks for at least seven years. He’s much, much more of a video gamer so board gaming is always a win. And, quite frankly, Rumis is a great game in general.

I know that it has been also printed as Blokus 3D but since it isn’t designed by Bernard Tavitian, it’s hard for me to think of it by that name. It’s a different concept. That said, if more people got to experience the game due to the Blokus branding, that makes the world that much better a place.

Rumis is a place where two different but not even remotely conflicting design concepts come together.

On the one hand, you are playing with literal building blocks on a Lazy Susan. The game has toy value because all of the physical elements are literally toys. As I mentioned, long before he ever learned to play the game, my son loved playing with the game.

On the other hand, Rumis is very definitely an abstract strategy game. And a very pure one at that. There are no hidden elements. There are no random elements. There are only the open decisions of the players. More than that, and I realize I might be prejudiced, it is a very good abstract strategy game.

And play value is definitely a thing and can be a powerful thing. It helps make a game engaging, it helps make it easier to learn, it helps make it fun. I remember being told that Connect 4 has been used as a therapy tool because of the sound and act of dropping checkers into the grid. Mind you, I don’t have any actual citation of that and the person who told me that could’ve been totally lying to my face.

But Rumis definitely has play value. a lot of games do. However, what Rumis also has, and is something that you cannot count on finding, is solid game design. The actual mechanics and gameplay have never failed me yet. Everyone I have taught it to gets it and likes it.

Rumis is a game that I think can work for anyone. That’s a rare thing to say.

My favorite Blokuses

In earlier blog, I wrote that I consider Blokus to be an important game. It's a simple abstract with deep choices that's had real mainstream success. I think it's a game that will still be played twenty years from now. However, I also wrote that I prefer Blokus Trigon and Travel Blokus to the original. So much that they are still in my collection and the original is not.

In the original game, each color starts out in the corners and work their way towards the center. It takes a few turns for any kind of conflict to get going. And you have to use all four colors. Otherwise, there will be too much open space. In two players games, each player uses two colors. With three players, you take turns playing with the neutral color. Or, better yet, don't play three players.

Travel Blokus or Blokus Duo solves these issues by being strictly for two players and having the starting positions near the center of the board. Instead of a leisurely series of opening moves, you get a knife fight from the start. And the smaller board makes that knife fight happen in the proverbial phone booth. It's a much tighter, more ruthless game than its parent.

When I first saw Blokus Trigon with its hexagonal board and pieces made of triangles instead of squares, I thought it was just a gimick. It took me literally one play to completely revise that opinion.

Like Travel Blokus, the starting positions are close to the center, allowing conflict right at the start. And there are multiple starting positions, adding to replay values. 

The triangular shapes create more porous barriers than the square shapes in the other Blokus games. This makes blocking harder but it also makes for more interesting plays.

But the real treat of Blokus Trigon is that it is a really strong three-player game. With three players, you don't use the outer ring of spaces. That's all it takes to create a claustrophobic playing area. Blokus Trigon doesn't just play three players. It is the one of the strongest three-player abstracts I have found.

I think that, for the world in general, Blokus is important for being a modern classic. But for folks like me who already liked a abstracts, it's important for being creating a model that helped create even better games.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/16395/blokus-duo

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21550/blokus-trigon