This is a documentation for Board Game Arena: play board games online !
Gamehelpred
Goal
Red is a tile-placement abstract strategy game for 2–3 players designed by Néstor Romeral Andrés. Each player commands one colour: White, Black, or Red. Build a large connected group of tiles featuring your colour as the outer border, and another connected group featuring your colour as the inner circle. Your final score is the point value of your border group multiplied by the point value of your circle group!
Components
Setup
- Players are assigned colours: White, Black, and Red. Turn order always runs White → Black → Red.
- In a 2-player game, the two players control White and Black; Red is a neutral blocker colour (scores nothing).
- The board starts empty.
Your turn
On your turn, choose any available tile from the pool and place it onto the table:
- Grid alignment: All tiles line up on a shared square grid.
- Touch a small tile: Except for the very first tile played in the game, every newly placed tile must share at least one orthogonal edge with an already played small tile. Touching only at a diagonal corner is not permitted.
- Large tiles apart: A large 2×2 tile
may never share an edge with another large tile (touching at a diagonal corner is allowed). - Opening move: White cannot start the game with a large 2×2 tile.
Two-player restriction
In a 2-player game, you cannot play the same tile type that your opponent just played (same size and colour combination), unless no other legal move is available.
End of the game and scoring
- The game ends immediately when no remaining tile from the pool can be legally placed on the table.
- Scoring: For each player, calculate:
- The point value of their single largest connected group of tiles having their colour as the outer border (small tile = 1 pt, large tile = 2 pts).
- The point value of their single largest connected group of tiles having their colour as the inner circle (small tile = 1 pt, large tile = 2 pts).
- Multiply the two values together to get your final score (border points × circle points).
- The player with the highest score wins!
- Tie-breaker: In a 3-player game, if exactly two players tie for first place, the third player wins! (A 3-way tie is a shared victory).
Controls on BGA
- Selecting a tile: click any available tile in the pool.
- Placing: click any highlighted square on the board to stage your placement, then click blue Place tile (or red Cancel).
- Tooltips: hover over the border and circle icons in the player panels to view "Largest square (border) group" and "Largest circle group".
- Preferences:
- Colorblind support (Preference 100, default: Off): adds distinctive symbols to tiles (White: circle, Black: square, Red: triangle).
- Sound effects (Preference 101, default: On).
- Confirm placement (Preference 102, default: Ask me first): set to "Place on tap" to place immediately on click without requiring the Confirm button.