Gigamic Katamino Classic Puzzle and Game

Product Information

Intermediate puzzles start with five pieces and advanced puzzles start with seven or nine pieces. But Is Katamino a Game? Katamino rule book’s board for Golomb’s Game

Take, for example, this simple three-piece puzzle The same initial three pieces with a fourth added.The introductory challenges start with a set of three pieces. After you’ve used those pieces to create a 3×5 grid, you’ll add a new, specific piece and move the wooden bar down to the 4 slot. A three-piece puzzle. Position the slider on the board between the numbers 4 and 5 and make as many PENTAS 4 as possible by finding 4 pentaminos among the 12 that can be assembled.

For example a Penta 6 is created by laying the slider between the number 6 and the number 7 on the game board (see below). In Katamino the term PENTA refers to a group of Pentaminos which completely covers the space defined by the slider on the game board. The frame for Katamino is a 5×12 grid. All 12 pieces fit into this grid nicely. (In over 4000 combinations, as it turns out.) If you take five identical squares and arrange them in different 2D shapes, you’ll end up with 18 different shapes. Twelve of these look the same regardless as to how you orient them, while six can be flipped over to create a mirror image of themselves. Choose one each of the mirrored image shapes and add them to the twelve others and you’ll have what is known as a set of Pentominoes.Once this PENTA is completed, move the slider up one space between numbers 4 and 5, add the Pentamino shown in Column 4 of Line A to the three pieces you just used , and then complete the PENTA 4 with those 4 pieces. The pieces themselves are made of a lightweight wood. They don’t appear to be carefully cut, however, as I noticed gaps between several of the pieces when they are aligned with each other. For even more challenges, try to complete as many PENTAS as possible with all the pieces, progressively moving the slider up to increase the difficulty. This Katamino edition has thousands of possible combinations!

This sole game really doesn’t do much to change the fact that Katamino is really presented as a series of 2D puzzles, each set within a 5x grid. The pieces are painted in bright, kid-friendly colors. The frame is solid, with a grid painted onto the bottom to help you count/visualize the number of squares needed to be filled.A pentamino is a game piece formed by 5 juxtaposed squares with at least one common side. (see exercise 1 and below figures)

A PENTA is a group of several pentaminos which perfectly fills the rectangle bound by the positioning of the slider. When considering Katamino, I am reminded of the two MazeScape puzzles I reviewed last year. They were unique, clever puzzles that I enjoyed working on over the course of a few weeks. Those, however, were strictly puzzles. What about Katamino? The other player chooses 1 maroon rectangle and 3 red squares from the small pieces.Then both players choose 1 pentamino at a time in turn until each has 5. The Small Slams consist of 42 PENTAS. To begin your first small slam, Place the slider on the board between numbers 3 and 4, and then take the first 3 Pentaminos shown on the table on line A until column 3 and complete the PENTA 3. Games featuring polyominoes have gained in popularity in recent years. Patchwork was one of the first to catch my eye, but there have been a great many others like New York Zoo, A Feast for Odin, The Isle of Cats, Ubongo!, and My City. My fellow Meeple Mountaineer, David McMillian even penned a polyomino Step Ladder article a few years ago.Each row of challenges starts off with a specific set of pentominoes. Set aside the other pentominoes and move the wooden bar from its position to the right of 12 to the number of pieces being used. There are 12 polygon pieces included in Katamino. Each of these pieces covers 5 spaces on the board and is called a Pentamino. The piece must lay flat and completely inside the grid area. The second player then selects a pentamino and does the same. The winner is the last player to place a Pentamino completely on the grid.