Icehouse started out as a game, but has developed into a game system. It utilises sets or 'stashes', a stash consisting of 15 little translucent square plastic pyramids in three sizes. Icehouse used to come in a box containing four stashes and a rule book; but nowadays the pyramids are available only in single stashes, and the rules can be found online, or in a book which can be purchased separately¹.

The Origin

The idea came about in a book by Andrew Looney². According to his Looney Labs web site, the main characters in the book were originally card-players. Later, to add interest, he exchanged the cards for small pyramids used to play a weird, turnless game.

They were nothing more than a plot device, sort of like Harry Potter's Quidditch, or like several of the games played in Star Trek. Well, that was the plan, anyway.

Now, several years later, Looney Labs makes several card games - and these boxes of 15 little plastic pyramids...

The Pyramids

Included in each complete set is four sets of Icehouse pieces. In the newer sets, each piece is a small pyramid with a hollow base. (Pieces in the older sets were made of wood, or folded cardboard, with a solid base; play options are more limited with these, since they are not stackable.) One's immediate inclination is to build something with them; this is encouraged. One's second inclination is to fall asleep after hours of building; this is not encouraged, since if you fall face forward you will have several little plastic pyramids painfully stuck in your face when you wake up. There is actually one game (called Spicklehead) where you try to do this while drunk; however, nobody has been either stupid or masochistic enough to try it.

The hollow pyramids come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. Small pyramids fit perfectly within the medium ones, and the medium pyramids fit exactly within the large. The resulting flat base comes in quite useful for several variants involving a checkerboard.

The Games

There are hundreds of games that can be played with Icehouse pieces - far too many to describe all of them here. Complete rules to all known Icehouse games can be found at the Sortable List of Icehouse's Cool Kindred (SLICK). This entry will describe a few of the games.

The Original Game

Usually just called 'Icehouse', this is a very unusual game compared to the other games available in the world at large. A lot of its concepts, however - most notably the idea of having no board and no turns - are common to Icehouse games in general.

In this game of chaos and diplomacy, you must place your pieces so that when all of them have been played, or time is up, you are ahead on points and have a better tactical position. Points are scored for successful attacks: pieces lying down (attackers) pointing at standing pieces (defenders) of opposing colour, such that there are more points scored for attackers than for the defenders³.

Why would you want defenders - cannon-fodder - at all? Because your first two pieces have to be defenders, and if you've used more than half your pieces and all of your defenders are attacked, you immediately lose the game. Ouch.

Strategies are varied, and shift - frequently - even within 30-second periods. Sometimes the game is almost a contact sport with people trying to get a pyramid in a location before anyone else can; at other times, the players just sit, glaring at each other, daring their opponents to make a move...

This is probably one of the most complicated games, and it used to be all there was. But soon, more games were created...

'IceTowers'

This game is sometimes called, in jest, the 'Duh' game, as it is the simplest of the basic Icehouse games. (A game is considered 'basic' if it is included in the book Playing With Pyramids, available from Looney Labs.) This, too, is a turnless, boardless game. All the pieces are placed standing up on a table, in a more or less random position. Then players, whenever they feel like it, grab a single piece that's not on or under anything, and stack it on any other piece of the same size or larger, making that tower theirs.

Of course, it's not that simple. When two or more of your pieces are in the middle of a tower, you can remove one of them. If two pieces of the same colour are together in a pile, you can split the pile in half at that point. When no more moves can be made, points are tallied.

'Zendo'

At the other end of the spectrum, Zendo is the Icehouse game that requires the most thought. One player is chosen to be the Master, and creates a well-defined rule that states what constructions are said to 'have the Buddha-nature'. Such constructions are 'koans'⁴. Players have to make various constructions of pieces and find out whether or not these might be koans that 'have the Buddha-nature'. In this way they must try to discover the secret rule.

The rule can be as simple as:

A koan has the Buddha-nature if it has at least two red pieces,

or as complex as:

A koan has the Buddha-nature if the total pip-count of its weird blue pyramids is greater than the pip-count of all red pyramids that are pointing straight up, and there must be one such pyramid in a koan.

Problems occasionally crop up with imperfectly-designed rules, however. Ambiguities can easily arise if you are not careful.

Making rules such as this:

A koan has the Buddha-nature if and only if the pip-count of the red pieces is divisible by the number of pieces placed weird.

should be reserved for when you get good at the game.

'Martian Chess'

This game is turn based, and played on a chess board. Unlike chess, piece colour doesn't matter; all pieces on your quadrant of the board belong to you. The idea is to gain points by capturing your opponents' pieces, but whenever you make a capture, you have to cross the boundary to your opponent - thereby giving him/her/it the piece...

'RGB'

In RGB, a barbaric game played on a chessboard, you're trying to kill your opponent's children. (You were warned it was barbaric!) You control an army of RGBs - alien creatures with three distinct layers of thought - and they lose one layer (and an ability) if they are attacked. For example, children must remain next to a piece which still has the green 'sustenance' layer, or the child starves. Children can be created if the spare pieces exist, but only by one male and one female, both with the blue 'reproduction' layer. And attacks can only be carried out by pieces with the red 'destruction' layer. RGB bears a few similarities to chess, but not as many as you might think.

'Epicycle'

Epicycle is an unusual game - even for an Icehouse set. It uses only one stash of pieces. In this two-player game, you are attempting to leave your opponent with no legal play, or with three pieces of the same size. The playing board is nine pieces arranged in a broken circle. Ten pieces with their points all facing each other would form a complete circle, since the top angle of an Icehouse piece is approximately 36°. With only nine pieces, therefore, there is a gap.

The entire game revolves around this gap. You place a piece in the gap, and take away a nearby piece into your personal stash⁵, following rather strict rules in order to do so. If you have no legal play, you lose. You also lose if you have all three pieces the same size.

The game seems simple on the surface, but the strategies are approximately as complex as those in a game of draughts.

'Rotationary'

This game is one of very few 'solitaire' games. Compared favourably to Rubik's Cube, Rotationary is played with one stash arranged in most of a 4x4 square. All pieces are lying down, and your move consists of turning one of them. But every turn causes a 'chain reaction', where the piece you end up pointing to is also turned. This may continue for several steps, depending upon the size of the original piece.

The object is to make all the pieces face one direction - a difficult task when playing the Basic game, and impossible half the time in the Advanced game!

Other Games

There are many more games than this, and there isn't space to describe them all. Here is a small sample:

• IceTraders
• HomeWorlds
• Volcano
• RAMbots
• Martian Backgammon
• Battle Zone
• Pikemen

Obtaining Icehouse

Icehouse pieces can be bought, according to colour, by the stash, at the Looney Labs website. Gaming and hobby shops might also have the pieces; you are unlikely to find them in a department store, however.

Conclusion

For those who like abstract strategy, those who like games, or those who like thinking at all, Icehouse is a truly fascinating way to pass the time, because of its large number of options and variants. It is excellent entertainment, and also extremely portable. Overall, Icehouse is a complete innovation in game design - seeing the pieces in a different way.

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¹ The rules are often ignored, however, since people make up their own games.
² Andrew Looney describes himself as 'a post-modern Renaissance hippie who used to program computers for NASA but now designs games for a living'.
³ Points are not the tips of the pyramids, but a score given to a pyramid based on its size.
⁴ In Zen Buddhism, a koan is a paradoxical anecdote, or a riddle without a solution. For example: 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?' Koans are used to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning, and to provoke enlightenment or Satori.
⁵ 'Stash' is the general Icehouse term for stored pieces. In this case, you will have exactly three pieces after any given turn.