Gameloft Brings Board Game Classic Blokus to the iPhone

Some classic board games have worked on mobile devices better than others, and Gameloft has tried its hand here with an iPhone version of Mattel’s Blokus -- for the most part, successfully. For those that have never played the original, Blokus is a game that supports two or four players. Each person plays as one or two colors (depending if you have four or two players) and a set number of oddly shaped, Tetris-like blocks of that color. Each block is made up of multiple squares, ranging from five to one, and each player must place one piece in their colored corner of the board. This is where the game starts to take shape, as each turn, players attempt to rotate, turn, and flip their blocks to try and fit them on the board. Here‘s the catch: The blocks must touch those of the same color, and they can only touch the corners. The idea, is to get as many on the board as you can, while blocking as many of your opponents’ blocks as you can, in order to earn the highest score and win. As far as the digital version of Blokus goes, Gameloft has actually done a wonderful job translating this tabletop title to an iPhone application. All the controls, as you'd expect, are touch-based and relatively intuitive to rotate and flip. Unfortunately, it isn’t perfect as the player has to touch the block first, release adn then drag, whereas it is more natural to touch and drag. You do get used to it, but it feel’s a bit clunky, and sometimes the block ends up back in your pile (at the bottom of the screen) and you have to repeat the process. Moreover, you are supposed to be able to rotate them on the play board itself, but it doesn’t always like to listen, so you’ll probably spend most of your time rotating it in a larger UI element at the bottom of the screen that shows your selected piece. Thankfully, the usability issues are all very minor and are made up for with the extensive single-player tournament mode. Currently, there are six different tournaments for players to enter and win, with five games within each (i.e. two players and two colors, two versus two teams, and so on). As expected, as players play and win, the different tournaments unlock and become increasingly difficult. The real draw to Blokus, however, is its multiplayer element. Frankly, a remake of a board game isn’t the same without some means to play with other people. As such, users are able to create and join Blokus games either locally or online. The online mode is what most people will end up using, as they create a free Gameloft Live account to hop on and play with. Utilizing all of the same game modes as the single player, online play is actually a lot of fun. Unfortunately, you won’t always be able to find a good game, and beyond online leaderboards through Gameloft Live, there is a bit of a social disconnect between the iPhone version and the original tabletop one. This obviously refers to the attraction of playing with friends, and quasi-anonymous online play just can’t emulate that. This is where the local multiplayer steps up, in theory. As it stands, users can play locally through either WiFi or Bluetooth. Now, that might not seem an issue at first glance, but it basically means that if your friends don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch with this $5 game installed, then you can’t play with them. When you played the real Blokus with four friends, did each one have to bring a game board? No, not really, so why is there no mode to play four players on one device? Regarding any other features Blokus has, they’re all okay. The game has a large amount of longevity to it through all its different tournaments and game modes, plus there are any number of achievements to unlock. Moreover, the presentation of the game, from visuals to sound, is all up there with standard Gameloft quality. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t make up for the disappointing local multiplayer mode. Overall, Blokus is a great game for single player purposes, but for the cost, its social potential falls short. That isn’t to say that $5 is a lot of money, but for your average user, they are unlikely to spend it when the analog version costs only a little bit more. Regardless, if you loved the tabletop version and can overlook the inability to easily play with friends on one device, or just like beating anonymous people online, then this is something you will probably enjoy.

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Gameloft Brings Board Game Classic Blokus to the iPhone

Christopher Mack

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Christopher Mack