by W. Eric Martin

▪️ In 2011, Susan McKinley Ross' game Qwirkle won the Spiel des Jahres award.

In my post about that event, someone relayed a story about designer Reiner Knizia having people playtest games at Kubla Con 2009, with one of those designs playing much like Qwirkle. (I presume that was what AMIGO released in 2010 as Big Five.) Players told Knizia about the similarity, and by chance Ross was at that convention; the two of them met, and Knizia took home a signed copy of Qwirkle.

Fast forward sixteen years: In August 2025, U.S. publisher MindWare will release Qwirkle Flex, a co-design by Ross and Knizia. Here's a short description of this 2-4 player game:

MindWare will have copies of Qwirkle Flex for sale at Gen Con 2025, along with two other games yet to be announced.

▪️ To look at another blocky tile game, we'll turn to Bloom, a Wolfgang Kramer design for 2-5 players that Swiss publisher Game Factory released in late 2024. (I saw Bloom at SPIEL Essen 24 while leaving the show and meant to check it out another day, then never got back to that booth. Boo. It's on the list for 2025.)

Bloom appears to be Kramer's take on Rummikub, with the components sure to look familiar to anyone who knows 6 nimmt! The game contains tiles numbered 1-104, with each tile showing 1-7 flowers, as well as four jokers.

Each player starts with thirteen tiles, and eight tiles and a joker are face-up in a market. On a turn, you either:

• Draw 1-2 non-joker tiles from the market, then refill the market from the reserve.

• Play a sequence of at least three tiles, with those tiles coming from your hand or "extra" tiles on the game board already in sequences. You can leave a gap between numerals in a sequence, so 10-12-13-14-15-17 is a valid sequence. If you steal tiles from a sequence, a valid sequence of at least three tiles must be left behind. (In the sequence above, a player can steal the 13 to make a 9-11-13 sequence since a gap of 12-14 is allowed. The 12, 14, and 15 cannot be stolen.) After creating a sequence, count the flowers on played tiles, then take a point token of that value or less. Point tokens range from 1-15.

• Add tiles from your hand to one sequence previously made. You score no points for doing this, but you're penalized for tiles still in hand when the round ends, so you're still effectively scoring points by doing this.


You can replace a joker on the board with a valid tile from your hand at the start of your turn before any of the three actions. In the image above, only a 21 can steal a joker; if the sequence were 20-J-23, then you could use either 21 or 22.

If you can't do any of the above, you must pass, and the round ends when all players pass in succession or one player lays down their final tile. Play two rounds, then whoever has the most points wins.

Bloom popped onto my radar again as Blackrock Games will release the game in France in 2025.

▪️ For chunky wood bits that lack both symbols and numbers, we can turn to EGG, a new edition of Yavalath from Japanese publisher ForGames that appeared in November 2024.

Yavalath debuted in 2007, and it was designed entirely by a computer program: Ludi, which had been created by designer Cameron Browne. (In 2011, Browne wrote about the creation of Yavalath and how it stood out among the 1,389 new games that Ludi created over a four-week period.)

The rules of Yavalath consist of a single sentence: Players take turns adding a piece of their color to a hexagonal board and win by making four-in-a-row of their color – but lose by making three-in-a-row beforehand.

That's it! I've played Yavalath more than twenty times, and it's a brilliant design because the goal and gameplay is clear, with your gameplay evolving over time as you learn which patterns pose long-term threats and how you can force an opponent to create a three-in-a-row to keep you from winning the game.

Oh, and you can play Yavalath with three players as well, with you being forced to block should the next player be able to win on their turn. If you create a three-in-a-row, you exit play but leave your played pieces on the game board.