Blokus World Tour (PC Games)

I bought this online a couple of years ago for our family for Christmas because it had good reviews and appeals to a wide age range, starting with around 5 years old. It is a strategy board game that requires spatial thinking--this version is easiest played with four players. There are three versions of Blokus--this one, Travel Blokus, and Blokus Trigon, that are all similar, but the others work better for two or three players.

It is a fun game for adults and kids, so works for a family or holidays when you have time to pull out some games. This and PIT are two really fun games that we keep using year after year.

The goal of this game is for players to fit all of their pieces onto the board. When placing a piece it may not lie adjacent to the player's other pieces, but must be placed touching at least one corner of their pieces already on the board. The player who gets rid of all of their tiles first is the winner, so you have to think of everyone you're blocking as you make your moves.

One game of Blokus typically lasts around 30 minutes. There are lots of small pieces and people used to complain about being frustrated if any pieces got lost. I have now seen that the company makes replacement pieces, so it's a non-issue. We have taken this on trips and in that case we have put the pieces in a bag with a tie to keep them from spilling out of the box.

We've given this as a gift many times now and people love it.