Humans have been naming the stars for as long as we’ve been able to look up in wonder. In our need to understand the universe and give order to it, we’ve named constellations and woven them into ancient myths and legends. Gridstones: Night Sky takes inspiration from these constellations to wrap a simple abstract game of pattern recognition in a setting that is both evocative and a perfect match.

Like the astronomers of old, the point of Gridstones is to find patterns in the night sky. Your hand is made up of cards presenting a pattern of stones in a 3x3 grid. The board is a grid of squares that expands from 4x4 to 6x6 depending on how many people are playing. Each turn you’ll place or remove a single stone trying to create a section of the board that exactly matches one of the cards in your hand, including blanks. That’s all there is to it.

The rules boast that you can learn the game in less than a minute, and it’s true. I taught you how to play in the last paragraph and I promise that we could start playing together already. Like many abstracts - or at least really good ones - the game that emerges from those rules is far more expansive than the rulebook. It’s tense and tactical, while forcing you to cede control and adapt.

In attempting to play one of your constellation cards to the table, you’ll be trying to sniff out the appropriate 3x3 section of the board to make your move. You can spin your card in your hand; the orientation isn’t locked. You can also use any 3x3 section of the board to match your card. In a two player game there aren’t as many options but when playing on the full 6x6 grid, the options really open up. There are many opportunities to sync stones between multiple cards and finding ways to overlap them on a large grid is a big part of the charm.

On the other hand, having multiple players acting between your turns can ruin your pattern faster than an overcast day can ruin an eclipse (I’m not still bitter or anything). It’s much harder to plan your turns out in advance when you’ve got multiple opponents, turning the game into one of tactical reaction rather than long term sequenced plays. I very much enjoy how well this scales up to multiple players which is something often missing from abstract titles.

The ease to teach and play make pulling it off the shelf simple, and the variety of constellations will reward repeated play. The natural synergies between some of the cards make pulling off sequences rewarding while also ensuring that strategies of denial and blocking will emerge the more you play. This 10th anniversary also adds some “Shooting Star” cards that you can play for a once-a-game special ability. None of them have blown my mind but they do add a touch of surprise that I quite enjoy.

Like an evening spent staring at the stars, Gridstones is calm yet exciting. I like delicately maneuvering around my opponents, removing stones here or adding them there to quietly block their patterns while pushing mine forward. It’s straightforward, yet the subtle feints and plays give it enough strategy to want to pull out to wind down from an intense game night and enjoy over a drink. Or to play when the clouds ruin your once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event.

For information on Gridstones: Night Sky visit http://gridstones.com

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