Jane says:

I found Katamino great fun and very hard to put down. There is something really satisfying about working with the chunky wooden pieces and finishing the puzzles.

You definitely get a lot better at solving these puzzles with practice but I've found that it can still be quite hard to repeat a solution. A couple of times, my oldest boy, Haydon, has announced one of the Level 7 puzzles is 'impossible' and when I try to show him I find myself engrossed for twenty minutes enjoying solving it all over again even though I know I've done it before.

The quality of Katamino is fantastic. The pieces and board should last virtually forever.

Paul says:

Katamino is hard to review as a single product. The collection of 12 pentominos can be used out of the box in four distinctive ways that are all covered in the instruction booklet:

Solve a series of puzzle challenges.

The instruction book packages these challenges into collections with increasing difficulty and complexity. Each collection is named, so you have "The Small Slam" (with its 56 puzzles ranging from very easy to fairly hard, this is the place to start) up to the "challenge" (with 160 puzzles starting at fairly hard and getting harder save this until you have had some practice).

We found that its a lot of fun to tick off the puzzles as you go so, unless you plan on buying a copy of Katamino for yourself and for your children you might like to print the tick sheets I've prepared for the purpose.

For solo play, the puzzle challenges are the mainstay of Katamino. Its a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle except that you get to complete a series of small challenges so it feels much more rewarding as you progress. The other big plus is that the consistency and shape of the pentominoes really help you to think spatially as you picture the remaining space in the box in terms of your remaining pentominoes.

Race to fill the box.

This variation is a two player game. The divider is placed in the centre of the katamino box (between the six and 7) to make two boxes and each player takes turns to pick pentominoes until they have five each. The players also take some of the simpler square and rectangular pieces provided. Then you just have to fill your box completely before your opponent.

The trick is to keep hold of your simpler pieces until you've placed the more difficult pentominoes.

This game appeals strongly to the seven to ten year age group and its fortunate that the katamino pieces are virtually indestructible because this game sees them and the board taking a lot of punishment as the fun hots up.

Enjoy a two or three player strategy game.

This is my personal favourite. The game is played on an eight by eight grid that comes supplied as a page on the instruction manual.

Each player picks pentominoes in turn. Beware, there are tactics in the selection and its not just a matter of selecting the 'easy' pentominoes.

Then you have to try to make sure that you are the last person to place a pentomino.

The trick is to try to create places where only your remaining pentominoes will fit.

Play a shapes puzzle game

Last but not least, this use of Katamino is mainly for younger players and it involves either making copies of the shapes provided in the instruction booklet or making up your own pictures using the pentominoes.

The quality of the pieces makes them easy to stack precisely and young children will quickly progress from making flat layouts to stacking the pentominoes into interesting shapes.

The educational benefit of Katamino

Katamino is a true educational game and you can really feel the benefits of playing at any age or level of ability. The spatial awareness gains are immediate and noticeable. What does this mean? The first and most obvious impact is in the way you find yourself improving at the puzzles.

When our six year old started playing, on the 3x5 small slam grid, he would pick up the pieces and start fitting them into the board in a largely random fashion. Now he looks at the pieces for a few moments and then places them correctly. He has learned to visualise their arrangement.

This puzzle really is a form of 'mental exercise' that will help you in your ability to solve all manner of real life geometry problems whether they involve trying to fit a screwdriver in an awkward space to get at a screw, building a chicken coup, or designing a new robot locomotion system.

There are plenty of web references to Katamino, particularly from France and Europe where it was invented. There are a few online playable versions (generally under the heading pentominoes) but none are easy enough to use or play for me to feel they are worth listing here. Let me know if you know of any!

Here are some of my favorite links:

Wikipedia	Interesting history and background on pentominos. Don't be tempted to try the computer versions of the game unless you want to see some very dated and clunky stuff.
Association of Teachers of Mathematics	A review of the educational benefits of Katamino
Coiled Spring	Reviews and comments from this UK distributor.