MASUKU is a refreshingly unique strategy game for 1-4 players that is easy to pick up, and then once you understand it, you’ll start second-guessing your moves and choices. The concept is based around using cards that mask (cover up) parts of an abstract board, allowing you to score points for each turn. The rules of scoring change throughout, meaning that switching strategies on the fly is required to win.
The best way to learn MASUKU is by playing the daily challenges and seeded single-player levels, both of which ask the player to reach 50 points in the least number of turns. The game board is a grid of three colours of circles, and most of those circles will have a circle, square, triangle, or star symbol inside them. Each mask is a 3×3 square with various holes punched in the grid, and players score points by placing the mask onto the grid, letting certain colours and shapes still show after the move. What scores points is displayed on the right side of the screen, where three rules are in play. If it is a blue plus sign, then every blue circle is worth a point. If there are two red plus signs but a yellow minus sign, then reds are worth two, but yellows take a point away. Each symbol rule will have a multiplier or division rule. Every few turns, you’ll be asked to replace one of the three rules with a new rule card, and you can have multiple rules about the same colour or symbol.
Placing a card is a simple drag-and-drop movement. You can rotate and flip each card, too, so you can get the perfect placement. As masks are placed, you’ll start to notice that overlapping masks is a key game mechanic, as sometimes you’ll want to limit the damage or space a mask takes up. There is a separate no-overlap mode that removes this trait, and it’s actually very hard to get good scores in! Rules change, and that changes what is now valuable or a penalty, and so new areas of the board become more or less valuable to play with. Getting to 50 points is easy enough, but doing it efficiently is another matter. This is where the daily challenge and seed become so helpful. You can replay the same layout with the same mask set, perfecting your strategy to get the best score for the online leaderboards on the daily challenge, or local scores for the seeded challenge. If multiple people score over 50 points on the same turn, the highest score is ranked higher.
MASUKU is addictive and thoughtful in single-player mode, and comes with a few variations that change the base ruleset. This includes the maddening “white out” mode that asks you to mask every circle in a way that leaves just one circle left. It’s like domino solitaire on steroids. Multiplayer modes add competition. There is a versus AI mode for a 2-player battle, and then a 2-4 player battle mode. In these, the same rules apply, but everyone is taking turns laying down masks. The board gets very busy, very quickly, and choosing how to overlap your masks becomes a critical strategy. If you can find a way that lets you win points but blocks your opponents from scooping up points nearby, a tactical block can be very useful. The flipside is that no one can get those points, and if the rule changes, it’s only a short-term block.
I love MASUKU. It’s fresh, brainy, open-ended, and highly strategic. It also comes in a variety of colour palettes to help with accessibility. My only tiny critique comes from a potential optimisation issue. My PC sounds like a jet engine playing this, and there is absolutely no reason why it should. I suspect it is because there are no graphical options and maybe the FPS is going crazy, so some options there would be very welcome to calm my PC down. From a gameplay standpoint, I’d love to have different-sized boards and score limits, but aside from that, MASUKU is the perfect pint-sized strategy game. Don’t sleep on this. We have a masked gem on our hands.
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