When I tell people that I like domino games, they are often surprised to hear that you can do more than just match the numbers. If you look in a book of games, often with Mr. Hoyle's name on the cover, you might find the basic game and maybe All Fives. If you're lucky, you'll find Chickenfoot and Mexican Train.
This book is a collection of domino games and puzzles that will broaden your horizons beyond a chain of dominoes with matching numbers. You'll find new games and puzzles that I designed, as well as some of my favourite domino games and puzzles by other designers:
- Unmatched Donimoes is a puzzle I designed where you have to slide all the dominoes into a rectangular shape, without sliding any matching numbers next to each other. (1 player, double-six dominoes)
- Capturing Donimoes is a puzzle I designed where you have to collect all the dominoes by sliding matching numbers next to each other. (1 player, double-six dominoes)
- Mirror Donimoes is a puzzle I designed where pawns walk around on top of the dominoes. (1 player, double-six dominoes, 4 pawns)
- Tetradominoes is a game I designed for one to four players where you play matching dominoes in a grid, then try to play the tetromino shapes on top. (1-4 players, double-six dominoes, 7 cardboard tetrominoes, and some beads, buttons, or coins)
- Bee Donimoes is a puzzle race game I designed where a swarm of dice bring nectar back to the hive. (1-6 players, double-six dominoes, 3-6 dice, and a timer)
- Domino Finder is a memory game I designed where you have to find the treasure domino without falling in a trap. (2-4 players, double-six dominoes, pawns, and two dice)
- Mountains and Valleys is a solitaire game by Sid Sackson where you have to lay out a map that you can hike on. I adapted it from paper, pencil, and dice to use dominoes.
- Fujisan is a solitaire game by James Droscha where you help four Shinto priests climb to the peak of Mount Fuji. I found 20 layouts that are much more challenging than usual. (1 player, double-six dominoes, and four pawns)
- Cobra Paw is a quick-reaction game by Derek Weston. (2-4 players, double-six dominoes, and two dice)
- All Fives is a traditional dominoes game, where you score points by making the ends add up to a multiple of five. (2-4 players, double-six dominoes)
- Dominosa is the classic domino puzzle by O.S. Adler where you have to fit the set of dominoes onto a grid of numbers.
The book of rules includes problems to solve for each puzzle. The Unmatched Donimoes problems are patterns of dominoes for you to start from, like this:
The Capturing Donimoes problems look like this:
To try the puzzle, get a set of dominoes. Then either read the rules, or download the PDF.
If you're interested, you can read about making donimoes or my design journal. If you're brave, you can read about experiments in progress (PDF).