Blokus is a 4 player board game played on a 20×20 grid. Pieces are made of 1-5 square tiles, and are placed at corners diagonally away from your own pieces. The goal of the game is to get rid of all your square tiles, while trying to hinder your opponents from clearing theirs.
Given today’s climate of Covid, playing physical board games with friends may not longer be feasible. As such, we hope to provide a socially distanced implementation of Blokus such that players still get the classic board game feel, but don’t have to be physically present together in one room. This project aims to build multiple working prototypes of the board game of Blokus, with each square fitted with LEDs, such that when one player puts down a piece, that piece will be tracked using a camera and appear on all the other player’s board in real time. The squares of the pieces will light up the LEDs of that player’s color on the other player’s board. This will effectively simulate placement of pieces from the other player as if they are all in the same physical location, and replicate the playing process of a game of Blokus with everyone in the same space. All each player will need is a computer, a special Blokus board, clear Blokus pieces, and friends! One player can then create a game, and wait for their friends to join from anywhere around the world.