Rumis is a game about optimal placement of blocks of various shapes within a confined space. The name means "stones" in the language of Quechua

Quechua languages

Quechua is a Native South American language family and dialect cluster spoken primarily in the Andes of South America, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a total of probably...

. The theme and artwork are inspired by the Inca architecture. Rumis has also been published under the name Blokus 3-D.

Equipment

There are several playing boards available - each with a different architectural theme. The pieces are composed of two, three, and four cubes

Polycube

thumb|200px|right|The seven free tetracubesthumb|200px|right|A [[Chirality |chiral]] pentacubethumb|200px|right|Puzzle with a unique solution...

. Each player has eleven colored blocks, each block with a different shape (two of the four cube blocks are reflections of each other).

Setup

Start with the board empty. Each player should have all of the blocks of their color available to them.

Object

The goal of the game is to have the most blocks of your color visible from the top at the end of the game.

Play

Play rotates among the players. The first piece may be placed anywhere. The other pieces played in the first round must be placed touching a piece of another color. On each following round, newly played pieces must touch a piece of their own color. Each playing board has a height restriction that limits how tall the structure may be, and pieces must rest wholly on the ground or other pieces, so that there can never be empty space underneath part of a piece.

If a player cannot legally place a piece, (which may happen because they have already placed all of their pieces), their turn is skipped. Play continues until no player can legally play any more pieces. Players are penalized one point for each piece of their color that they have not placed, and earn one point for each 1x1 portion of a piece which is visible when looking straight down from above the structure.

Strategy

Being a game for younger players, the strategic element is not as deep as other block games such as Pueblo

Pueblo (game)

Pueblo is an abstract strategy game which is a competition to optimally place blocks in a constrained space. The name, theme, and artwork for the game derive from the famous architecture of Taos Pueblo, but they are very lightly applied.- Equipment :...

, however it still does have a strategic element of limiting other player's moves, ensuring that you have space to make more plays, and saving your own pieces with a large surface area for play at the top of the structure.

Variants

• Rumis can be played by two players, with each player controlling two colors.
• Rumis can be played as a solitaire game creating a soma cube
  Soma cube
  The Soma cube is a solid dissection puzzle invented by Piet Hein in 1933 during a lecture on quantum mechanics conducted by Werner Heisenberg. Seven pieces made out of unit cubes must be assembled into a 3x3x3 cube...
  
  with some number of pieces.

External links

• Rules for Rumis from publisher's website.
• Board Game Geek page