Reach for the Heights in Puzzle Game K3

Be the last one left in the game as you add tokens to the pyramid, while trying to block your opponents. If you’re ever left without a legal move, you’re out of the game!

Published by Helvetiq, K3 is a fast little puzzle game that takes up little table space, comes in a compact box, and plays in fifteen to twenty minutes.

Gameplay

The game comes with a cloth bag full of wooden hexagonal tokens. During set up, you randomly draw nine tokens from the bag and place them in a row in the center of the table. This row will be the K3 pyramid the players will be adding to during the game. The tokens in the bag come in five different colors, blue, black, red, yellow, and green. At least four of these colors must be represented in the starting row, or else you draw new ones. Each player starts the game with a certain number of white and grey tokens, and draws a certain number of colored ones from the bag. The number varies based on player count. Each player then uses their tokens to build a pyramid, with the number of tokens in each row being determined also by player count. Each token must rest on two other tokens in the row beneath it. You may place the tokens in any order you wish. It is now time to start the game.

On your turn you take one available token from your pyramid (an available token is one with no other tokens on top of it) and place it onto the K3 pyramid. When placing a token it must be placed on top of two tokens in the row beneath it, and at least one of those two tokens must be of the same color. Grey tokens act as wild, representing any and all of the colors. White tokens, when you remove them from your own pyramid, are discarded rather than being placed on the K3 — meaning you do not have to place a token on the K3 this turn.

If you ever place a token on top of two tokens of the same color (this includes a grey token acting as a wild) you receive a penalty. An opponent takes any available token from your pyramid and sets it next to his own. He can use it on future turns.

On your turn, if you cannot perform a legal move, you are eliminated from the game. The last person left is the winner.

Review

K3 is a fun, engaging, yet simple puzzle. There are few rules to learn and it’s easy to get the hang of, but challenging to master. The fact that you choose how to build your own pyramid at the start of the game, controlling the order in which you’ll reach different tokens and colors, is quite clever and gives you room to strategize.

As the K3 pyramid grows taller and there are fewer tokens in each row, you also have more opportunities to try to block your opponents or try to force them into taking penalties. Since each player can also see everyone else’s personal pyramids, you also have plenty of information to work with to decide how best to go about this.

The component quality is excellent. Helvetiq is great at making small, casual games that look lovely and are really nice to play with. The wooden tokens are pleasant to stack and the cloth bag is well made.

There’s very little to say in K3’s disfavor. It can be a little bit easy to knock tokens off a pyramid, and younger children would probably have trouble with the stacking. But in general this is just an excellent little puzzle of a game that plays quickly.

Pros: Ability to choose your own starting state, blend of puzzle and blocking opponents, component quality

Cons: Tokens can be knocked off accidentally

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.