5 Games Similar to Qwirkle

Ever since its release in 2006, Qwirkle has become one of the most popular board games, fusing together several different board game genres. Because of that, there are several games that are similar to Qwirkle. Many take the idea of using tiles to score points and figure in a scoring system to determine the winner.

If you’re a big fan of Qwirkle but want to mix things up a little bit and expand your board game horizons a little bit, try one of these five games that are most similar to Qwirkle.

Hive

Hive is an abstract strategy board game with a fun bug theme and hexagonal-shaped tiles. It was designed by John Yianni and published by the Gen42 Games company in 2001. The game allows for two players and can take around 20 minutes to finish, on average. 

The objective is to protect your Queen Bee while attempting to surround your opponent’s Queen Bee with your tile pieces. It’s said to be somewhat similar to chess in that you’re able to move tile pieces to different positions after they’re placed, depending on the circumstances.  

Blokus

Before being sold to Mattel in 2009, a French-based company, Sekkoïa, released Blokus in 2000. The game was originally designed by a mathematician named Bernard Tavitian. In Blokus, you’re able to play with 2-4 people and gameplay runs about 20-30 minutes on average.

The objective of the game is to fill the grid-like board with more of your color pieces than your opponents. The game board has 400 squares, made up of 20 rows and 20 columns. There’s four separate colored sets of tiles, 21 blue tiles, 21 yellow tiles, 21 red tiles, and 21 green tiles. There’s other variants of the game including Blokus Duos, Blokus 3D, Blokus Jr, Blokus XL, and Blokus Trigon. 

Rummikub

Rummikub is a tile-based board game with influence from the popular games, Mahjong and Rummy. It can be played by 2-4 players. It was created by Romanian-born Ephraim Hertzano. Rummikub was first introduced to the US in the early 1970s and quickly became the best-selling board game by the late 1970s. The most popular version of the game is the Sabra variant. 

The game has 104 numbered tiles with values from 1-13, as well as two joker tiles. They come in blue, yellow, black, and red. The objective is to play tiles from your pile that value at least 30 while adding groups and runs as the game goes on. After using all of your tiles, you call “Rummikub” and win the game. 

Azul

The game Azul, which translates to Blue in English, is an abstract strategy board game. Michael Kiesling created Azul in 2017 and found inspiration based on the gorgeous Portuguese tiles called azulejos. The game is made for 2-4 players who receive their own 5×5 player board. The goal is to take tiles, all one color, from the middle of the table

There are multiple rounds in Azul, with the winner of the game having the most points, with those points being tabulated after each round. A round ends in Azul when one player has a horizontal line of tiles. The first three turns in a round set the foundation for scoring, and strategy comes into play right from the get-go. Some have referred to Azul’s rules as being “tricky,” but that’s part of the fun.

Ingenious 

The creator of this abstract strategy game, Reiner Knizia, was commissioned to do so by Sophisticated Games and published by Kosmos in 2004. Its original German name, Einfach Genial, translates to Simply Ingenious in English. 

The game allows for 1-4 players of ages 10 and up. The game comes with 120 tiles, 4 racks, 4 scoreboards, and 24 color pegs. You place the tiles in the bag provided, shuffle them up, then each player uses one of their six tiles to match the design with a tile on the board.