Thursday 5 May 2016

Toppollo Takes Hold



We've been playing Toppollo, a simple wood block balancing game I built in the school wood work shop. The idea of the game is very simple - players take turns to balance a block on the tower. If any blocks fall off, the active player has to take them. The winner is the first player to get rid of all their blocks. Toppollo has proved to be highly addictive and very popular.

Tim cunningly places a piece early in the game.

Rowan is a tricksy man. He places blocks in a tricksy manner.
The tower is starting to look interesting...
Rowan places an almost impossible block... 
IT WORKS! Okay, so a few seconds later most of the tower fell over, but for a few seconds, Rowan was a shiny golden god of Toppollo.


Here are the full rules:

Object of the game: to get rid of all your blocks.
Components:
Toppollo Tower (basically a small plywood table just large enough to hold four blocks - in my case 60mm diameter)
Four sets of blocks, consisting of:
Cube
Oblong
Cylinder
Wedge
Pyramid
Arch
Curve (the bit cut out of the block to make the arch)
Slanted Oblong
Slanted Cylinder
(these will be made from 30X30mm pine and 25ish mm dowel - closest I could get to 30mm dowel)
Setup:
Place the Toppollo Tower on a hard, flat surface such as a table or board within easy reach of the the players.
Each player is given a complete set of blocks.
Starting the game:
Each player takes their cylinder piece and tosses it underarm towards the tower. The player to land their cylinder closest to the center of the tower goes first. Blocks are allowed to touch the tower and land on top of the tower.
Playing the game:
Players take it in turns to place one of their blocks.
Blocks must be placed on the Toppollo Tower or on top of blocks which are already on the tower.
If any blocks fall off the tower, the player whose turn it is takes these blocks into their collection.
The first player to get rid of all their blocks is the winner.

These rules are still being play tested - some tweaks will be happening, and new blocks will also be tested out.
There's also the 'expert mode' variant where the top of the base tower is removed, and blocks are balanced on the cross-shaped support instead...
Pictured: Expert mode. Not pictured: the enormous balls required to PLAY expert mode.

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