Customer Reviews

Blokus Classics Game

5 star:		(524)
4 star:		(60)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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!!

I only bought this game because it was recommended to me time and time again. It looked boring and simplistic, but I figured there must be something I wasn't seeing. And there was! It is a great game! All of my kids can play it and challenge each other and me. This game does not necessarily favor the oldest(and supposedly wisest?) player. My seven year-old can beat the pants of me.

It also gets the brain working in non-traditional ways. You have to look at the grid in unique ways. The pieces aren't lined up in rows and columns like most games. You connect pieces by the corners. So sometimes you can connect a piece in an area that looks like it is totally bocked by your opponent.

And of course there is the strategy... I still haven't decided which is the best piece to start off with.

The game also takes a nice length of time, not too long and not too short.

This is a great game. I noticed that someone mentioned their concern about losing pieces. Our three-year old lost a piece shortly after we got this game. I simply called the company and they sent me a replacement free of charge. They are great to work with. Enjoy!

I bought this game with the great hope of entertaining and be entertained at the Thanksgiving night. At first no one wanted to play the game, except my 3-year old daughter. I changed the rules of the game so that she and I both could enjoy it. We literally played it as if we were playing Tetris on the computer. She had great fun and so did I. Then my sister-in-law's husband decided to play and we played the two-player version and it was a blast! I can't wait to play with 4 people. I'm sure the dynamics will improve on an already great game.

Blokus is a board game onto which tiles of different shapes made up of squares, or units, not unlike the shapes seen in the famous computer game called Tetris. The shapes come in four groups and identified by a different color: red, green, yellow, and blue. Each player starts at a corner and places a shape. A shape can only touch the corner edge of another shape of the same color. Each player places a shape in this fashion until all the shapes are finished, or it is impossible to place another shape. Players do their best to prevent their opponent(s) to place any more of their shapes, while attempting to place all of their pieces.

The game between two people takes approximately 20 minutes and decisions made early on bear fruition later in the game to many surprises and challenges.

Player with the least amount of units not used is the winner.

The colored shapes on the board create interesting mosaics and even have artistic appeal as well as mental gymnastics.

This is a very clever game and I hope you enjoy it as much as I am.

Blokus is a combination of Tetris, chess and Chinese Checkers. It is incredibly easy to learn, and as tactically challenging as chess (I am an intermediate chess player). With four players, it is as riling as Monopoly ("why are you after ME all the time????"). The two player version is more calculable, as the pieces are fewer. I highly recommend both the 4 and 2 player versions of the game.

We have been playing Blockus since we got it...unfortunately, it really can only be enjoyed when four people play....the directions for 2 or 3 players require you to play TWO positions each or to share the remaining , untaken position...and play is then pretty awful...but what a game with four players..fun, strategic, lots of offense and defense all played an a great looking and feeling board...we have even taken to playing in the pool...with the board on a pool raft (all parts are plastic..). The game also depends on each player having 21 very specific and individually different playing pieces...and some are very small and I live in fear that one piece will be lost and the game rendered completely unplayable...except for the two aforementioned caveats, I love the game and it would have goteen five stars...

This game is easy to learn in a few minutes. My 4 1/2 year old son learned the rules quickly and could play with me the first try. Becoming an expert is much harder though! The game is different each time we play, and always challenging and fun. Best of all Blokus isn't like any game I've played before. You have to plan ahead like chess, but the game changes so fast you're always changing your strategy on the fly. Blokus can be played very quickly with a young child, or at a more thoughtful pace with an adult or older child. All in all Blokus is great, and ADDICTING the way a good game should be.

I bought this game for my kids originally as a way to spend time together as well as develop thinking skills. The great surprise is that it suits even kids with learning disabilities since there is no reading involved. Last winter vacation the age span at the table playing spanned 4 generations! And everyone was having fun.

This game is also great to play with people from more than one country. No one is at a disadvantage since the game is not dependent on language fluency.

[...] where you'll find people from all over the world playing. (I've used on online translator to chat with people in both German and Spanish.) Have fun!