Zendo

Publication History

• Rules for Zendo first appeared in issue #14 of Hypothermia, July 2001.
• Zendo is one of 12 games featured in Playing with Pyramids, published in 2002.
• A standalone edition of Zendo was publshed in 2003, featuring Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue pieces, with 16 simple "starter" rule cards.
• This is one of 12 games for which special cards were created during the Pyramid Arcade Kickstarter campaign.
• An updated standalone edition of Zendo was published in 2017 using pyramids, blocks, and wedges.

Zendo Rule Cards

For the game to work, the moderator must have ideas for secret rules. Originally, it was part of the moderator's task to think up and remember a good secret rule. However, this can be quite a challenge in and of itself, and many a game has gone badly because the moderator chose a rule that was much more difficult to unravel than they thought it would be.

This problem was solved with the 2017 re-development of the game, which included a deck of 40 rule cards for the moderator to use. Each of these cards has a rule concept with various permuations, so that the 40 cards can be used to generate more than 200 distinct rules. A pair of clips is used to mark off the choices so that the moderator can't forget the details of the rule.

Those cards are only available in the updated Zendo set, and anyway they are keyed to the different types of pieces used by that set.

In 2020, as part of the Pyramid Quartet Kickstarter, those rules – plus the 20 additional ones created for Zendo Rules Expansions 1 & 2 – were revised to work with the pyramids.

In 2026, an updated version of this deck was released. Although superficially similar to the 2020 deck, the cards in this version are packed with more options each, so that with just 52 cards (vs the old deck’s 60) it generates ~1700 unique rules (vs. ~200). The new cards also have 4 difficulty ratings (instead of 3) and were playtested extensively in a process described here and here.

The Zendo v3.0 cards are available now as a print-on-demand product which you can order through the Game Crafter.

(Note: photo to the right depicts 2020 edition.)

Zen Theme

• The original version of Zendo featured a Zen Buddhism theme. This element was phased out when the game was re-released in 2017, however, some long-time fans will likely continue to use the "Buddha-nature" terminology.
• The old-style rules to Zendo are still available, on this page and in this PDF.

Other Notes

• The Looney Labs FAQ page has a section for Questions about Zendo.
• Rules for 2-person Zendo (currently in this FAQ)
• The boxed set published in 2003 featured this cover image by Alex Bradley: