Score four

Score four is a three dimensional abstract strategy game that extends the idea of tic tac toe into a cube-shaped playing space. It is played on a four by four by four frame in which players drop colored beads into vertical columns, so that a bead always settles onto the topmost open space in its column, much like the mechanism later used in Connect Four. The object is to align four beads of a player's own color in a straight line, on a single level, straight up a column, or along any diagonal running through the structure. Because beads can only be added from the top, players must plan several moves ahead, building more than one possible line at once so that blocking every threat becomes impossible for the opponent. Score Four was first sold in 1968 under the Funtastic label, and Lakeside issued four different editions of it during the 1970s; Hasbro later marketed a version in the United Kingdom as Connect Four Advanced. Games magazine listed Score Four among its top hundred games in both 1980 and 1982, praising how it pushed tic tac toe strategy into three dimensions. A variant called Tic Stac Toe added neutral blocker pieces that either player could place defensively.