We play a lot of games in my house, everyone from the three year old up is a big fan, so when I played this at a friend's house I knew it was the perfect game for us.

The game itself is very attractive, with translucent coloured pieces that give a satisfying click when placed. The board is slightly ridged in a grid of squares, meaning that the pieces don't slide around. Someone put a lot of thought into designing the appearance of the game, and it paid off.


Blokus is a strategy game for two to four players. It consists of tiles of different shapes and sizes, in four different colours. Each player in turn plays one piece, diagonally from one of their other pieces. It cannot share any edges with another piece of the same colour, and the idea is to place as many of your pieces as possible. By spreading out into the opposing players' corners, you can reduce the space available to them, and they are doing the same to you.

If you place all pieces there's a bonus, but otherwise, it's the player with the fewest numbers of 'squares' left who wins. Each playing tile is made of squares, from one to five. If you have two five pieces left at the end, then you beat someone who has their one, two, one three and three four pieces left, as you have fewer 'points'.

The game is recommended for players aged 5 and up. Game play is not intuitive for adults, as you have to place pieces diagonally from each other, not next to each other. However, my 6 year old niece and my daughter, who was about 33 months when she first played it, both grasped this instantly. The effect of this is that it's a great game to play with a wide range of ages, as it's actually easier in some ways for younger children.

All four of us love the game, and it's a great game for playing together. It is easier to play with four, but there are rules for two or three players as well. That's too hard for my (now) 3 year old, but she is much younger than the target audience!