Hey, you can download Flipuzzle again!

 After trying out Chutes and Levers, I decided that I wanted to revisit Flipuzzles. That series was the first set of puzzles I discovered that involved flipping and rotating a card and nothing else. 

The only component is the card itself. As you follow some sort of path on grid, you have to keep a track of where you are in your head. For me, at least, that can be quite tricky.

There are a variety of Flipuzzles. Let me compare and contrast a couple examples. 

The most basic one is Maze. You have a grid of different colored squares. You can move one space at a time. If you move up and down, you flip the card longways. If you move left or right, you flip it sideways. Either way, you are in the same coordinates on the other side of the card. In Maze, you need to find a path of the same colored tiles from the beginning point to the end.

All of the Flipuzzles follow this basic template. You are finding a path by flipping the card in different ways.

The other example I want to show is Chess. In Chess, your movements are controlled by what chess piece you are on and you have have to land on other chess pieces. The reason I picked Chess as an example is because l thought not would be one of the hardest to parse but I actually found it to be the easiest. It also shows how variety can be added to the basic formula.

Flipuzzles started out as a design contest entry called Thin Cube, one card that acted a bit like a Rubiks Cube. (Extra thanks to D. Teuber who sent me a colorblind friendly version so I could actually play it) Then, for a short time, there was a collection of eighteen puzzles in seven different flavors available for download.

That went away because Button Shy licensed the system for the subscribers. I wasn’t one at the time but I hope the puzzles made for Button Shy get released sometime.

Then, after Chutes and Levers reminded me of the series’ existence, I went back to its BGG entry and found a new set of nine puzzles had been released in 2024! So now I can recommend Flipuzzles again.

One Card Mazes remains my favorite form of this sort of puzzle. I find them intuitive to parse but still tough to solve. And I’m apparently not alone since they’ve had four successful Kickstarters.

However, Flipuzzles is still an interesting system with a lot of variety. It’s also the most intricate single card puzzle system I’ve seen. Now that you can check it out, it’s worth checking out.

The line between games and puzzles

I’ve been trying out Rove (but it will take some more plays before I’m ready to review it and decide if I want to try out the expansions) when I found myself asking what the line was between a puzzle and a solitaire game.

Now, my standard rule of thumb is that if you can do the same action and get the same result every time, it’s a puzzle. The Flipuzzle series, which I quite like, are pure puzzles because _they have a solution_ You could say they have one path to victory.

With that said, it’s fair to say that there is a blurry line between a puzzle and a solitaire game or some forms of cooperative game. I think it comes down to ‘Is there more than one valid option when you have to make a decision?’ Are there multiple paths to victory?

Relatively early in my PnP/solitaire exploration, I tried a couple of very, very simple nine-card games that just involved swapping cards on a grid to form a pattern. I found them relaxing but I couldn’t see them as games. For me, they were puzzles and very simple ones.

The 2019 Soliatire Contest had a varient of that idea called Solitaire Spellbook Swappjng where each card has a one-use movement power which were the only way to move cards. Still more of a puzzle than a game but there were actual choices.

And a game like Rove, with both more random elements and moving parts, feels very safe to call a game. And it’s still the tip of the iceberg. More and more games have solitaire modes, games with heft and depth and complexity.

The more unsolved the piece of media in question is, the more I feel it moves into the game category. I can see how someone can argue that any piece of media where you are playing against a system and not other players has puzzle elements. 

In the end, I think the question matters more to designers than to players. While I am sure there are pure games and pure puzzles, I think viewing some works as blends is more useful.

If you want to play with Pentominos, you need to look at Katamino

At its heart, Katamino is a set of Pentominos. 

A Pentomino is a geometric shape that is made of of combining five squares. There are twelve possible shapes you can make this way. They even have a naming convention after the letters each one resembles the most closely.

To be honest, I actually learned a lot of what I know about Pentominos from the kid mystery book Chasing Vermeer. One of the two kids carries a set around and uses them as a thinking aid. I had seen them in games like Blokus before that but that book got me thinking of them as their own idea.

For all intents and purposes, Katamino is a tool box of activities you can do with the Pentominos. It comes with a tray with a spacer so you can make different sized areas to work with. There's a book of puzzles that you can solve with the Pentominos, as well as some smaller blocks to fill in spaces for certain games.

The games include a speed puzzler, like Ubongo, and a tile-laying game kind of like Blokus. But, so far for us, where it really shines is just as a puzzle. Neither Carrie or I are that into puzzles but we've definitely enjoyed the Katamino puzzles and there's a ton we haven't done yet.

On the one hand, I have to admit that I don't think that Katamino does anything in particular special. The actual games cover ground I've seen before (and, at least in the case of Blokus, done better) The puzzles are fun but Katamino didn't invent Pentomino puzzles.

BUT, where Katamino shines is in the quality of the components. This is not the first set of Pentominos I've owned but it is by far the best made. I've had ones made put of cardboard or plastic. Katamino's are made out of chunky, thick wood. These are solid blocks.

They are easily the most durable Pentominos I've ever used by far. And, since they are so thick, you can make three-dimensional structures out of them, which is actually one of the kinds of puzzles. Our two-year-old is still too young to do the puzzles or play the games but he loves building with them.

Katamino would not be my first choice of abstract games to buy. However, as a casual solitaire puzzle and as a family activity, it really sings. It's not something I'd pull out for hardcore gamers but it's something I can see us as a family enjoying for years to come.

DISCLOSURE: I was sent a review copy of Katamino (Thanks!) but I don't have any official connections with Gigamic.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6931/katamino