Every once in a while you come across a truly unique game that captures your imagination. For my wife and myself, Blokus is such a game.

Back in February I blogged about my harrowing re-introduction to the board game Risk. That post told the tale of taking our Blokus game to the local library for game night and how I ended up playing Risk instead.

I first discovered the game one night late last year when my wife and I had gone shopping at the local Barnes and Nobel. While lamenting how shopping at the bookstore had changed, I happened upon the game of Blokus and it immediately caught my eye.

The game is devilish in its simplicity. The basic version consists of a square game board and four sets of brightly colored plastic pieces that fit on the board. The pieces are shaped like Tetris pieces varying in size from one block to various shapes consisting of five blocks. All players have their own sets of identical pieces and no two pieces within each set are the same. It only takes about one minute to learn the rules.

The game is turn-based and consists of each player adding pieces to the board until someone has placed all of their pieces or everyone is blocked. The player who covers the most squares on the board wins. The game game is hard and I’ve yet to ever successfully place all of my pieces. No one has at our home game.

There is also a two-player version called Blokus Duo (with two colors) that we also picked up. It has a smaller game board. Versions we have yet to try include Blokus 3D and Blokus Trigon that comes with triangular pieces. I’m sure that version will melt my brain.

You can play the game for free online at http://www.blokus.com. If you like it be sure to pick up the real thing.