Shibumi Spline rules

Spline is a simple N-in-a-row game that exploits the pyramidal stacking to guarantee a winner.

The board starts empty. Two players, White and Black, takes turns placing a ball of their colour either on an empty board hole or to stack on any 2x2 platform.

Aim: A player wins by making a full line, orthogonally or diagonally, on any level. That is, lines on the 4x4 (board) level must be of length 4, lines on the 3x3 level must be of length 3, and lines on the 2x2 level must be of length 2.

The following diagrams show completed games won by White with 3-in-a-row (left) and Black with 2-in-a-row (right).

Every game is guaranteed to produce a winner before the board fills up, as any two balls of the same colour on the penultimate level (2x2) must necessarily form a line.

Spline expresses shibumi in its simple rules, intuitive nature and guaranteed result.

Shibumi Spline description

Spline is one of the simplest game that can be played on the Shibumi game system.

Shibumi is the essence of beauty, or elegance in its minimal form. A shibumi object may appear simple but will reward the viewer with hidden depths as it is explored over time. Shibumi is simplicity hiding complexity.

Games and puzzles based on square pyramidal stackings have existed at least since Edouard Lucas' cannon-ball stacking problem of 1875. The most famous 4x4 square pyramidal game is Pylos (published by Gigamic). Shibumi is different due to the third ball colour, drop mechanism, different numbers of players, lack of a board gutter, and the fact that it's a system for playing many games rather than the embodiment of a single game. Some Shibumi games may be playable with a Pylos set but many will not.

Shibumi Spline credits

Spline was invented by Nestor Romeral Andres from NestorGames in 2011. It is based on the Shibumi platform invented by Cameron Browne in 2011.

The Jocly version of Spline+ was developed by Michel gutierrez (@_mig_), with graphic designs from Jérôme Choain (@jcfrog) and Cameron Browne.