Motif ← Back to home
How to play

Learn Motif
in 2 minutes

2 players 5×5 board Tiles in white, gold & black 13 tiles to win …or box them in
1

Goal of the game

Have more tiles in your colour than your opponent, or box in all their tokens.

How the game ends

The game ends as soon as there are no white tiles left on the board.

The board has 25 tiles, so the player with 13 or more tiles in their colour wins.

2

Winning by boxing in

There’s a second way to win. If your turn ends with every one of your opponent’s tokens unable to move, you win on the spot, whatever the score.

When can’t a token move?

A token can’t move when every tile next to it is taken. The edge of the board and the player’s own tokens count as walls too.

3

Tile colours

Every tile on the board can show one of three colours: white, gold or black.

To change a tile's colour, rotate it in the board.

4

Setup

  • Turn every tile to white.
  • Each player puts their tokens beside the board.
  • Toss a coin to decide who goes first.
5

Your turn

Every turn you do two things, in any order. You must do both whenever you can.

A. Move all your tokens

Move every one of your tokens on the board, if it can move. Each token moves only once per turn.

B. Add one new token

If you still have tokens beside the board, add one. A token you just added can't move until your next turn.

The game keeps going even after all your tokens are on the board, until no white tiles are left.

6

Moving a token

A token moves up, down, left or right as many tiles as you like, and it can turn corners along the way. It can cross tiles of any colour.

Colour the tile you land on

After moving, turn the tile your token lands on to your colour. Don't change the tiles it passed over.

A token cannot…

  • move diagonally
  • jump over other tokens (but it can go around them)
  • end its move back where it started
  • share a tile with another token

Careful: your own tokens can block each other too.

Tip: flip your tokens Tokens have two sides. Flip each one after it moves so you can see which tokens have already moved this turn. Flipping is optional. The two sides of a gold token

Can do

Cannot do

7

Adding tokens

Each turn, add one new token and turn the tile it's placed on to your colour.

You can only place it on a reachable tile: a tile that one of your tokens already on the board could move to.

In the picture, black's two tokens can reach every green tile. The gold tokens block the red tiles, so black can't add a token there.

Your first token On your first turn you have no tokens on the board yet, so nothing limits where you can go: place your first token on any empty tile.
8

Stalemate

If the game gets stuck in a loop, then every turn, if you can, you must change at least one tile to your colour, either from white or from your opponent's colour. This breaks the loop.

Ready?

Try a game now