Knitting Circle
- Board's Eye View
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
AEG and Flatout Games have subtitled Knitting Circle as a Calico game. We can understand why, in that it's another pattern building game that's themed around home crafts. Like Calico there are cats notionally involved and both games benefit from Beth Sobel's artwork. Those tho' are really where the similarities end because Emily Vincent's game is a much lighter game.
In Knitting Circle, the 1-4 players (you can play solitaire) are scoring by 'knitting' various items of clothing. You start the game by moving your cat meeple around a rondel to collect yarn (tiles) and then you use the yarn tiles to complete an item. The yarn tiles are double-sided, and you need to have them orientated to the correct side for the garment you are 'knitting'. You can also score more points for completed items that meet the requirements on one or more of your buttons; and there's competition too over satisfying objective cards.
Players are mostly focused on their own pattern building, tho' in the yarn tile drafting stage there may be some limited scope for competitive players to engage in hate drafting to deny other players the colours you think they are going for based on the buttons they have on their board. Other than that tho' Knitting Circle feels like multi-player solitaire, and none the worse for that: indeed it seems very appropriate to the theme and target audience for the game.
The theme gives this game an appeal to prospective players who might otherwise baulk at playing a more abstract pattern builder, and its light, easygoing gameplay makes Knitting Circle a good candidate to pick as a 'gateway game' to introduce players who are new to moddern board games. We'd recommend players start with Knitting Circle and maybe progress to Calico rather than playing Knitting Circle as a sequel.
