Azul and Reef studio Next Move’s next game is block-stacking puzzler Tuki

Next Move, the publisher behind last year’s colourful Spiel des Jahres winner Azul, its follow-up Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra and Reef, has announced its fourth game.

Tuki is the newest design from Grzegorz Rejchtman, the creator of polyomino puzzle series Ubungo, in which players race to create specific shapes on a board using their available pieces.

Tuki appears to build – pun intended – on Rejchtman’s spatial puzzling with a move into three dimensions, as players use its 3D block pieces to construct inukshuk dictated by a die with animal symbols on.

As you’ll know – and like us, definitely didn’t use to Google to find out – an inukshuk is a type of human-made monument formed by stacking stones on top of each other, most commonly found in the Arctic Circle. Tuki’s title comes from the Inuit word tukilik, which means an object that represents a certain message – often the case with inukshuk, which can be used as commemorative symbols.

There are 600 different inukshuk in Tuki that can apparently be built in thousands of unique ways using the bits in the box. As well as simply putting blocks on top of each other, some of the patterns might require pieces to counterbalance other blocks. The number of blocks available to players is limited, so working out a solution might need some creative measures.

If that sounds intimidating, don’t worry – there are two levels of difficulty in Tuki, aimed at expert stackers and relative newcomers. The game takes around half an hour to 45 minutes to play.

Tuki will be released at this year’s Origins game fair in the US on June 12th. Expect to find it stacked up on shop shelves not long after that.