Rummikub® and Rummi

Rummikub®

Rummikub® is the brand name of a set of plastic tiles with numbers 1 to 13 in four different colors. These tiles are often used to play games of the Rummy family.

Rummy games are very popular all over the world, and are played with ordinary playing cards, or sometimes with custom made card decks. In Eastern Europe and in the Middle East, similar games are traditionally played with wooden tiles with colored numbers.

Nowadays it has become popular to play Rummy type games with plastic tiles that are sold in toy shops and department stores, by trade names like Rummikub or Rummy-O.

The game rules included in the Rummikub box are those of Manipulation Rummy, where you can manipulate tiles that were played earlier. But each release of the game seems to include a slightly different variation of the rules. In reality, the game is played in many, sometimes home made, variations of the rules.

Instead of "Manipulation Rummy" or "Tile Rummy", the game that is played with Rummikub® tiles is sometimes (incorrectly) referred to as "a game of Rummikub".

Rummi

Rummi is the name of game software that enables you to play Manipulation Rummy games on your computer. It runs on Windows, Macintosh and Linux (like Ubuntu) and is available for download and for playing directly from the web site.

With Rummi, you can play a wide variety of these games. You can play against the computer, or with other people, online over the internet. It has many game rule options, include some original ones, that you can combine to create your own games.

Is Rummi "Rummikub software"?

Well, yes and no. Because Rummikub® is merely the brand name of a particular set of plastic tiles, there really isn't such a thing as "Rummikub software".

On the other hand, since the type of game most played with such tiles is often called "Rummikub", one could argue that Rummi is "Rummikub" software.

Whether you call Rummi "Rummikub software" or not; it enables you to play the same games on your computer that you can play with Rummikub® or Rummy-O tiles. And because Rummi allows you to create games with your own game rules, you can now play the game on your computer exactly as you are used to when you play it with the actual plastic tiles.

Rummi is not related to Rummikub®.