I had never actually played the board game Blokus, but after my hands-on time with a preview build of Majesco’s Blokus Portable: Steambot Championship for the PSP I might have to pick it up. Basically the game involves four players, each with a similar set of differently shaped blocks takes turns placing them on a grid. Each piece has to have a corner touching the corner of another, and no sides may touch. It starts off simple enough, but when the board starts getting crowded and other players start purposefully blocking off your corners the strategy element really kicks into high gear.
Blokus is sort of a Tetris board game, where up to four players place one of block shapes onto the board until no one can place anymore, with the winner being the one with the least amount of pieces left over at the end of the match. It’s the sort of game you’d sit around and play with your family if you weren’t such a video game addict. Luckily for us, Majesco has just announced Blokus Portable: Steambot Championship for the PSP, which merges the award-winning board game with characters from the Steambot Chronicles PlayStation 2 game to perhaps make the board game sound a bit more compelling. With support for 16 players in ad hoc mode or three players with game sharing, I doubt the title needed the extra boost, but a little anime charm never hurts. Blokus Portable: Steambot Championship is due in early 2008.
