Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 15-45 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)

This is a review of the American Educational Insights printing of Rumis. It was previously published in a Swiss edition by Murmel Games in 2003.

The Components

Rumis comes with high-quality and beautiful components:

• 1 turntable
• 4 game boards
• 44 stones
• 1 rulebook

Turntable: A very high-quality and sturdy plastic turntable that spins very smoothly. It’s got an indented space in the middle of the table to place a game board in.

Game Boards: 4 game boards, each printed full-color on very sturdy cardboard. Each one shows a grid upon which stones can be placed, and sometimes shows different height limits for different parts of the board. The boards are overall colorful and attractive; each one also includes a bit of descriptive color: a name for the structure being built, and a description of how it was used in the ancient Incan Empire.

Stones: 11 stones each in 4 different colors (red, green, blue, yellow). These stones are built in various shapes: "el"s, straight lines, zig zags, etc. They’re all molded from sturdy, hollow plastic. They also have a bit of texturing on their surfaces which makes them look very nice.

Rulebook: A simple, 4-page rulebook which quickly explains how to play Rumis, including some charts, diagrams, and examples. It looks easy to learn from, though this was a game that was actually explained to me, rather than my learning it from reading the rules.

Box & Tray: The only cheap component in the set. The box is one of those awkward "fold-up" boxes, though at least it's made of thick cardboard. Four trays inside the box keep the four colors of pieces separate.

Overall, the components of Rumis are all high-quality, beautifully produced, and easy to use. I was shocked when I saw the game retailed for $30, because I'd been expected it to be $10-15 higher based on the pieces. It earns a full and unquestioning "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Rumis is to play all of your building stones, and in such a way that you maximize their visibility from the top of the structure you're building.

Setup: The game begins with the turntable being placed in the middle of the table and one of the four structure maps being placed in the middle of the turntable. Then, each player takes one set of 11 building stones; play begins with a first player.

The Building Stones. There are 11 building stones in each set, each of which is 2-4 cubes in size. Most of them are two dimensional. You have a few straight lines (2-, 3-, and 4-length), a short turn, an ell, a half-a-plus, a square, and a zig-zag. Three of the cubes are fully three dimensional. Each consists of four cubes, and each extends in three different directions (left/right, forward/back, and up/down).

The Structure Maps. Each of the 4 structure maps defines a base grid for how stones can be placed, and also mandates height limits on how high they can go. The simplest is probably the chullpa (tower) which is a 4x5 grid which can go 8 height (or less for fewer players; each map varies its max height based on the number of players). A more complex one is the coricancha (pyramid) which is an 8x8 grid which has height limits of 1 along the edges which increase to 4 in the middle 2x2 section of the grid. For the maps with variable heights, the numbers are all clearly shown on the map.

First Placement: On their first turns, each player gets to place one of their stones. This stone must be orthagonally adjacent (next to or on top of) at least one cube of one other stone that's been placed already.

There are a few other rules for placement of stones: they must be fully on the grid; they can't go over the height limit; and they can't create any overhang (empty spaces under the stone).

Additional Placement: In later turn each player must place another one of his stones, but now it must be orthagonally adjacent to a stone that they've already placed of their own color.

In placing these stones players need to keep their eyes on two things: keeping their color "open" to make it easy to place additional stones; and placing their colored stones in positions that they'll be visible from above in the final structure (either by placing them at the maximum height of the structure or else placing them in such a way that other stones can't be placed above it due to height/shape restrictions).

Ending the Game: A player is out of the game when he is unable to legally place any more of his stones.

Play continues until all players are out (or else have played all their stones).

At this point each player scores his points. He gets a positive score equal to the number of cubes of his stones visible from looking straight down on the pyramid. From that he subtracts the number of stones he was unable to place. The player with the highest score wins.

Variant Rules: For two players it's suggested that each player takes two stone colors and plays them on alternate turns; in the end each player scores their better color. This seems to work quite well--better than normal two-player play.

There's also some solo rules, which suggest figuring out how to make various cubes (e.g., 3x3x3, 4x4x4, etc.) from the pieces. It sounds less intriguing to me, but some people might enjoy it.

Relationships to Other Games

Rumis (2004) is a spatial positioning game, wherein your goal is to place specifically shaped blocks in certain positions on a board for maximum points. As you'd expect, it's also an abstract strategy game. Other games in this same category are: Blokus (2000), a two-dimensional strategy game, somewhat similar to Rumis, where you goal is to place as many of your 2-D shaped pieces as possible; and Pueblo (2002), which is three-dimensional, but uses a set of identical 3D pieces, and where you're trying to hide your color from both the sides and the top. Clearly, Rumis' scoring and 3Dness is like Pueblo, while its selection and placement of odd-shaped pieces is like Blokus

In my opinion, it's a better game than at least Blokus by a fair amount; I haven't had a chance to play Pueblo yet, but their game play seems much more varied than the difference between Blokus and Rumis.

The Game Design

Rumis falls into the category of abstract games that I'd define as being "easy to learn but hard to master". Or, if you prefer, it has quite simple rules, but a lot of strategic complexity.

Rumis manages this thanks to two orthagonal levels of strategy: scoring points and maintaining freedom to place. Its use of many different shaped pieces also allows for a lot of strategic depth, as you try and figure out what to use now and what to use later.

You put this all together and you get a very good abstract strategy game that just happens to be of filler length. It works equally well for two or four players (I haven't tried three yet, but I assume it's not quite as deep because you'd be less concerned about your color getting blocked) and offers a lot of replayability.

The decision to include four different maps just increases that replayability. Even if you start to figure out some optimal moves on some maps (and I do think that at least the pyramid map has some clearly optimal moves involving outlining the level one areas and locking in the level four area with a single square) there's still lots more room to explore. The stairway has remained my favorite map thus far.

You put that all together and you have: short length, yet real strategy, and good replayability, and thus Rumis gets a top rating. I was a bit hesitant due to the innate simplicity, but I eventually decided to give it a "5" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Rumis is currently being marketed as an educational game; it's not really my field of expertise, but I presume that the fitting together of shapes would help train some spatial skills for kids.

However, Rumis far exceeds that category; it's a beautifully produced and enjoyable abstract strategy game that allows careful thinking and still plays quickly. It's one of the few games that I'm willing to play again and again in the same day, and currently one of my favorite games of the year.

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