Players in QBQ start with four cubes of their color in one corner of the game board, and to win they must move across the board to create in the opposite corner a square of four cubes, a cube of eight cubes, or a square of nine cubes. All other pieces owned by that player must be out of play. On a turn, a player takes one of three possible actions:

• Moving a cube already on the board to a space orthogonally adjacent to the pieces it was taking previously (so the shape "oozes" across the board); you can choose to place the cube on top of another cube of your color.
• Tilting a stack of cubes of your color to make them spill across the board. If you land on an opponent's stack that was shorter than your stack, then the opponent's pieces are removed from play.
• Adding a cube from your stock to an existing stack of yours, whether on the lowest level or above.