Colorpop
Colorpop Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Contents
1 inclined board and 10 slides; 95 tokens in 5 different colors plus 5 joker tokens; 5 secret tokens.
Object of the Game
At the start of the game, a color is secretly assigned to each player. Each player will discreetly try to ensure that as few tokens of their color as possible remain on the board at the end of the game.
Setup
The 100 tokens are placed randomly in the 10 slides; tokens are inserted from the top of the slide, marked with an arrow, and each slide holds 10. The 10 slides are then placed on the board (arrows pointing up), making sure there are no more than 5 tokens of the same color connected orthogonally (vertically and/or horizontally). If necessary, swap slides around to change the connections (fig. 1).
Each player randomly draws one of the secret tokens and learns the color assigned to them. They keep this token hidden until the end of the game.
How to Play
The first player is chosen at random, then play continues clockwise.
On their turn, a player chooses a group of tokens of the same color and makes them all disappear from the board by pushing them from above (fig. 2). It is forbidden to eliminate an isolated token.
The player may remove any complete group of 2 or more tokens, with no limit on the number, and of the color of their choice. A group is made up of orthogonally neighboring tokens (to the left, to the right, above, or below). The player must make the entire group disappear: they cannot choose which tokens within a given group to remove.
Jokers can be considered as any of the 5 token colors, at the choice of the player whose turn it is.
After playing, the player collects the tokens they made disappear and sets them down in front of themselves, then it is the next player's turn.
A player may not pass their turn: as long as it is possible, they must make a group of connected tokens disappear.
An empty slide may not cut the board in two. When a player empties a slide, they take it and place it at the far right of the board, sliding the other slides to the left (see fig. 3).
End of the Game
When all of a player's colored tokens have been removed from the board, that player has won: they announce it and the game ends.
Otherwise, play continues until there is no group of tokens left to eliminate; each player then reveals their secret color and counts the tokens of their color remaining on the board. The player with the fewest wins the game (fig. 4: green wins). If several players tie, they are separated by counting, in front of themselves, the number of tokens of their own color that they personally removed; whoever removed the fewest is the winner. If several players removed the same number of tokens of their own colors, it is a perfect tie.
Variants
Solitaire
The rules are the same.
The player draws a secret token and tries to remove all the tokens of that color by applying the rules above.
To make the game more complex, they may draw 2, 3, 4, or even all 5 secret tokens, their objective then being to completely eliminate all the assigned colors.
Two-Player Variant
The rules are the same, but each player draws 2 secret tokens and so plays 2 secret colors. The winner is the player who has the fewest total tokens of their 2 secret colors on the board at the end of the game. If the 2 players get the same score, they then count the total number of tokens of their 2 colors that they personally removed; whoever removed the fewest is the winner.
Team Variant, for Four Players
The rules are the same, but players play in teams of 2. Each player draws a secret token, learns the assigned color, and passes the token to their partner so they can learn it too. Members of the same team do not play consecutively. The winning team is the one that, at the end of the game, has the fewest tokens of its 2 secret colors on the board. If the 2 teams get the same score, the total number of tokens of their 2 colors that they personally removed is counted; whichever team removed the fewest is the winner.
® & © Gigamic 2011, based on an idea by Lionel Borg.