The way my game group operates, is that we rotate hosting between each member. Whoever’s turn it is to host, gets to pick the game(s) we play that evening. Sometimes we finish our game a bit early, so the host gets to break out one of their smaller games to cap off the evening. Such was the case the other day when Blokus 3D hit the table.

We had just been handed a crushing defeat in the final mission of Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth: Shadowed Paths expansion, which meant our campaign had finally come to a close. As some kind of detox from the heavily thematic combat oriented game, the colourful blocks called to Bigfoot, who plopped it onto the table.

Blokus 3D (otherwise known as Rumis) is a three-dimensional abstract strategy game. All players receive the same pieces, then take turns placing piece after piece, trying to be the player who comes out on top. Literally. The victor is the player who has the most blocks of their colour when viewing the final structure from above.

The game starts with a template being placed down on the plastic lazy susan creating a form for the structure that you’re going to build. The structure also goes up in steps, where the first row can only be one block high, while the second row can be up to 2 blocks high, and so on until you reach 6 blocks. The only other placement restriction is that the block you place must touch another block of your own colour (which is the opposite of regular Blokus rules, where your blocks cannot touch other blocks of your colour). Beyond that, players just alternate taking turns until someone runs out of blocks or no players are able to play anymore.

The lazy susan is a nice touch, as there will be times when the structure has created a cliff, or your only spot to place is now from a single square poking out the back of the structure. The play area on that lazy susan has ridges, so the blocks don’t go flying off the base when you rotate it, but that same consideration does not extend to the blocks themselves. An errant sneeze could send your whole game scattered across the table. Not that I would know….

A big part of Blokus 3D is placing your blocks in such a way that it benefits you, but also doesn’t let your opponents completely hem you in. in a higher player count game, a poor placement and cutthroat opponents can see a player eliminated after a single block placement. I appreciate the depth in this thought, the short term gain of getting a lot of blocks on the top-most layer, but not working towards the later game of having more placement options.

It’s quite nice having a three-dimensional positional abstract game. There’s no randomness, no luck involved in Blokus 3D, just skill and strategy. It’s a spatial puzzle that tickles the brain in a delightful way, and a game that made me instantly want to play it again and again. It helps that games are so short, with only, like, 12 pieces allocated per player. At 2 players, it’s a knife fight in a phone booth as you try desperately to avoid giving your opponent a leg up, and at higher player counts it’s more tactical. Rewarding you for having multiple options each turn, and snapping the perfect spots when the time is ripe.

I enjoyed Blokus 3D more than it’s 2D cousin, but I have always enjoyed spatial puzzles, and the inclusion of the 3rd dimension feels new and exciting to me. I wish the blocks weren’t quite so slick, so I could play this with my kids and not worry about their non-dextrous fingers knocking the whole game over, but as it stands, it’s a great cerebral puzzle to bust out at the end of the night when you really feel like crushing your opponents and punishing them for their lack of forethought.

I just looked at my usual online game stores, and it looks like Blokus 3D is hard to find. But hey, maybe this can be the grail game that gets you into thrift stores and yard sales.