Blokus is an in-your-face, territory domination game in abstract format. It is a highly interactive contest that is best with four players and with its fast play and good replay ability it is one of the more interesting, if lesser known, new games around. Part of its obscurity may be its French origin and the fact that few comments have been made about it in most of the normal German game sources.

The board is a raised plastic square with slightly raised gridlines. Each player receives an identical set of 21 pieces, with sizes from one to five grid-size squares in unique orientations. Each player's goal is to place as many pieces as they can on the board, with minus points assigned at the end equal to the total number of squares not placed. So, if I am left with a 5-square piece, a 3-square piece and a 2-square piece, I score negative 10 points.

The key, of course, is how the pieces are placed. The first piece must be placed in a corner of the board and each piece from then on must touch only the corners of any piece previously placed. This typically results in a fast race to the middle of the board in order to leave many expansion options open. On any given turn, there are obviously two choices to be made: which piece to place and where to place it. These decisions can be made to quickly place an unusually shaped piece that will be difficult to fit in later, to perfectly squeeze in a piece that has been left open by other placements, to create an outlet for more pieces by opening a new area of the board with a placement, or to play the right size piece to cut off an opponent's growth. In practicality, the best moves do several of these at once and the player that can see the board and its development best, along with good sequencing of their pieces, will prove victorious.

Within this straightforward process, amazingly intricate patterns develop and the choices for attack versus defense reveal themselves quickly. It is necessary to leave options open for growth, lest you be cut off without the right piece left to open up a new area of the board. It is especially satisfying to find a key placement that extends a seemingly dead-end link; of course, finding those spots for your opponent is also key. If you manage to place all of your pieces, you score a 15-point bonus and that is raised to 20 if you manage to place the one, single-square piece as your final play. These bonuses only make sense in the context of multiple games, obviously, since the only other scores are negative and thus zero would be an easy winner in a single game.

The pieces in Blokus are nicely colored plastic that are hearty enough for normal play, but will certainly break or crack if stepped on accidentally. The game comes packaged with rules in four languages, a trend that is nicely becoming more common especially with non-German European producers. There is a nice implementation of the game online at www.blokus.com, and it is worth trying the game here before buying a physical copy to see if this is your cup of tea. The physical game is worth owning, though, as it will appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike and provides a refreshing and interesting play in a short period of time.

Blokus is an excellent spatial game for the whole family. I say "for the whole family" because the game is substantially more interesting for adults than most kids' games. The game is completely abstract, with no theme, but with its colorful geometric pieces, most kids won't mind at all.

Each player begins the game with an assortment of geometric shapes. One player has all the red shapes, one has all the green shapes, etc. Players take turns deploying pieces to a grid-board in such a way that the piece touches a same-colored piece at one or more corners, but not along any edge. Once the board is mostly filled and no one can make a legal play, the game ends and the person whose remaining pieces have the smallest total area wins.

Although this summary may be a bit tricky to follow without the illustrations, the rules are actually extraordinarily simple. If your child understands what it means for two shapes to touch at a corner, and to touch along an edge, then your child will be able to grasp this game.

This game offers ample opportunity for kids to learn and exercise strategic and tactical thinking skills.

The game's biggest drawback is that it is really optimal with exactly four players. You can play with two players by doubling up colors, or with three players by using a neutral color, but these solutions aren't terribly satisfactory.

A couple of other things to be aware of before choosing this game: First, the pieces rest fairly shallowly in the board; clumsy kids may find themselves knocking the pieces out of their locations all too easily. Second, the number of available options dwindles dramatically in the second half of the game, so young players may need assistance in locating the few available legal moves.