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The GIPF Project is an award-winning series of six abstract strategy games by designer Kris Burm. The series is named after the first game, GIPF, and the idea behind the project is that the reward for winning each of the other games in the series is to allow the winner to introduce new pieces with special powers, called potentials, into a concurrent game of GIPF. However, any of the games may also be played individually in the normal way, and they have attained most popularity in this form. The potentials are available in 3 separate sets, the first containing TAMSK potentials, the second ZÈRTZ and DVONN potentials (along with pieces to expand ZÈRTZ standalone games), and the third and final set containing YINSH and PÜNCT potentials, plus extra GIPF pieces. The publication of the third expansion set at the Essen Spiel 2006 event completed the project, and marked the partnership of Burm with Belgian game company SMART, who now publishes all the GIPF games. In 2007, Burm released the new game TZAAR to replace TAMSK as the second game in the GIPF Project.
Contents
All the games take place on some form of hexagonal board, and usually the playing surface or a player's power diminishes as the game draws to an inevitable conclusion. The idea of introducing additional games that can be used to affect the outcome of the main game came from Burm's childhood, when he and his brother would "race" cars around a rug. For each turn, they would play another game, and the winner of that game would get to roll six dice to determine his car's movement, while the loser would roll just five.
As of 2017, YINSH, TZAAR, and DVONN are the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th highest ranked Abstract Games on Boardgamegeek (ZERTZ, GIPF, and PÜNCT rank 9th, 18th, and 41st respectively). ZÈRTZ, DVONN, and YINSH have all won the Mensa Select award.
List of games
Most of the games in the series can be played free online or against freely available computer opponents.
The games are based on elements: Tamsk (time), Zèrtz (water), Dvonn (fire), Yinsh (air), Tzaar (earth), Pünct (the interconnectivity of the brain) and in Gipf all these elements come together.
The original games were published by Don & Co. "Don" is a nickname of Burm used by his friends. The "Co" element came from friends who helped in publishing the game.
Origin of the names of the games
Kris Burm is a fanatic climber. The idea of Gipf came to him while climbing a mountain in Germany. It comes from the German "Gipfel", the top of a mountain. During the climb the word "Gipf" became something more than just the top of the mountain. Burm said that "give me a gipf" could mean "can I have a light for a cigarette". In the progress of making the game, Burm got aware that this game concept would become the highlight of his game designs. So it became a personal "top of the mountain".
Another thing that fascinates Burm is names of cities like Brno. He wanted to do something similar with the games. Out of this came the rule, that all additional games in the Gipf-series would have names with one vowel and 4 consonants, that should not be related to any language. The struggle in publishing the last game was that tough, that it was suggested to Burm "to put a point behind it". The German for point is Punkt. Due to the rule that the games should not be related to any language, this was transformed to Pünct.
Tzaar is the only game to stray from the naming conventions of the Gipf-series. Burm made the game on request of SMART who did not like Tamsk. Burm then removed the element of time from the series. Tzaar intentionally uses two vowels and is related to a language, signaling his feelings about his cooperation with the publisher. Nevertheless, he always stated that he was pleased with Tzaar.