Kibosh, a strategic puzzle game based on the popular board game Blokus, has been released by Thumb Genius Software in the app store. The goal of the game is domination, but it will take plenty of planning and a little bit of luck to achieve that goal.
Kibosh presents the player with a 20 x 20 grid, upon which each player must take turns placing blocks from their dock onto the board. In order to place a block, it must touch a corner of a block of the same color, but cannot share an adjacent side. The idea is to place blocks in such a way that it leaves plenty of corners available for you to continue building off of, but also to cover the squares at the corner of your opponent’s pieces, putting the kibosh on his ability to place new pieces. If you block the majority of the corners of an opponent’s piece, that piece will be removed from the board and returned to its dock, which opens the previously occupied space up to capture.
There are three game modes: 2-player versus, 4-player versus, and player versus iDevice. Each game involves building from the 4 grid corners with 4 different colors: blue, purple, yellow, and teal. In both 2-player versus and player versus iDevice, each player controls two colors, either blue & yellow or purple & teal. In 4-player versus, each player plays a single color. Playing two colors simultaneously can get a bit confusing, as your concentration is split between two locations on the board. It would be great to see a mode where you control one color and the iDevice handles the other three. There are also several other options that you can adjust, such as AI difficulty, the amount of time each player has to think, whether or not to enable random start, and whether or not to remove kiboshed pieces.
The winner is the player who earns the most points. Each shape is unique and comprised of between 1 and 5 smaller blocks, resembling Tetris pieces. You earn 1 point for each block that comprises the shape that you have placed. There are also bonus points for placing all of your pieces on the board, for each kibosh of an opponent’s diagonal, and for using your single block piece as your last.
The graphics are simplistic, but clean. There is no sound, so you’ll have to play tracks from your own collection if you need background noise. Controls are strictly touch-based. Touch-drag any piece from your dock onto the playing surface. Once released, a horizontal swipe will rotate the piece in the direction of the swipe. A vertical swipe flips the piece. Double-tapping zooms in and out and touch-dragging while zoomed in pans around the board. If your piece is placed in a position that constitutes a legal move, a play button will appear. Tap to confirm placement of the piece. We had small issues with the difficulty of placing pieces at the very edge of the board and swipes being interpreted as drags meant to move pieces. A little patience is necessary at times, though there is probably some tweaking that could be done to improve this. Pieces that are in your dock but cannot be played due to the available space will be grayed out. If any player has no legal moves remaining, the game will indicate this on that player’s turn and skip to the next player. Kibosh also features auto-save in the event that you accidentally exit the game.
There are other Blokus-type games in the app store, most notably Exqueezeme, but we preferred the look and feel of Kibosh. There is certainly replay value, as the game is never the same twice. At $0.99, you will certainly get value for your dollar. Kibosh, despite its minor issues, is worthy of 4-Dimples.
Kibosh gets our AppSmile 4-Dimple rating:
