GIPF is a strategic game for two players based on a classic concept: in turns, players introduce one piece into play until achieving four-in-a-row. Players then remove their row and capture any of their opponent's pieces which extend that row. This principle of capturing pieces creates each time again completely changes situations on the board. The purpose is to form successive rows of at least 4 pieces, until the opponent has no piece left to bring into play.

GIPF is a pure and challenging game that combines classic systems with completely new elements. Full of surprises and offering unlimited possibilities, it will appeal to occasional players as well as to fanatic gamers. We dare to hope that whoever starts playing GIPF, will play it for a long time.

GIPF is a Project

GIPF is not only the name of a game, but of a project as well. This project concerns a group of games and extra pieces which will follow step by step.

Each game of the project will be playable either separately, or, by means of the extra pieces, in combination with GIPF. It concerns a system that makes winning or losing GIPF-related games a strategic factor of the game GIPF itself.

The intention behind this project is to create a wide variety of possibilities and a growing number of components, so that players will be able to compose themselves which version of GIPF they would like to play at any given moment.

GIPF is a Story

GIPF takes place before the Big Bang.... There was nothing yet: no time, no space, no matter... absolutely nothing except the potential for what was going to happen. Without this potential, there would have been no Big Bang and nothing, thus, of what we perceive and know at the present time. Players of GIPF represent this potential; the pieces of the winner symbolize the cause of the Big Bang, the beginning of everything--and of the world as it continually comes into existence from that point on.

A clarifying note from designer Kris Burm about the GIPF Project expansion Set #1 and the TAMSK potentials included with the TAMSK game:

As you maybe know, enclosed in the TAMSK box are 3 white and 3 black TAMSK-potentials. These are samples. You need a minimum of 3 potentials of each color to get a feeling of how they change a game of GIPF. The GIPF Project Expansion Set #1 contains 12 TAMSK-potentials; 6 potentials per color is the standard number to play with. The kit is meant to give players who like playing with the potentials the possibility to get more potentials without needing to buy a second game of TAMSK. That aside, it is also meant to serve those who want to find out what potentials are all about without needing to purchase TAMSK.