Little Circuses Review

Grace

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Posted by Grace on May 4, 2017

Kevin Wilson has an impressive design resume. A few highlights include Descent, Arkham Horror, the Charlie and Michael-approved TMNT: Shadows of the Past, and the Raf-recommended Arcane Academy. Unfortunately, every great designer makes some mistakes, so let’s just say that Little Circuses is Wilson’s equivalent of Michael Jackson’s duet with Eddie Murphy. (Seriously, that really happened. Look it up).

First you get the clowns, then you get the audience, then you get the money.

Little Circuses is a tile-laying, engine-building game that fails to implement either of its mechanics very well. Over the course of the game, you will add tiles to your starting board, try to attract audience members that can earn you money or victory points, and take actions denoted on the tiles. On the main board, Ringmaster John will move along spaces, acting as timer for the game, and showing how many actions you can take that turn. For most spots, you get a full day; this means one build action and one perform action. On half days, you choose to either build or perform. A build action is inaptly named as you actually have three options when taking it: construct (pay to add a tile to your board), take $2, or draw a new tile. A perform action means you move your “spotlight” token orthogonally from one tile to another and take the indicated actions. Though actions aren’t difficult, they are hard to remember when first learning and playing the game. There are no player aids included in the game, so you end up having to pass around the rulebook or keep asking what each icon means.

After every five turns, the game awkwardly pauses for new acts to arrive. These are character cards (“Star Attractions”) that players draft, granting immediate or permanent abilities until the next new acts space is reached. Star Attractions have two sides, one of which encourages more player interaction than the other, though this is still minimal. In general, I’m perfectly fine with multiplayer solitaire games, but Little Circuses is even more than I can deal with. The only time you really say anything to others is when you say “done” for your turn or unpassionately mention that they took a Star Attraction you would’ve preferred. Looking at others’ boards does little to even inform you of how well they might be doing.

One of us, one of us. Gooble gobble, Gooble gobble.

Little Circuses feels like a lackluster, uninspired effort. The actions/options play out repetitively through the course of the game, with no rewarding arc. It’s clear that you should be building an engine of some kind, but the game never really lets you do it in a palpable way. After the spotlight leaves a tile, that attraction is closed until the next town, so it’s clear you should create as efficient of a loop as possible. However, building this engine is limited by the tiles you draw and the finite number of turns. In fact, you get fewer actions as the game winds down, which feels more like your circus is getting indicted for animal cruelty instead of Ringling Brothers finishing the show with elephants tap dancing on a tightrope. Though nothing is mechanically broken, the game is unremarkable in how it plays out. It seems as though IDW, the publisher, may have felt the same way as the game was released with little fanfare.

Due to union regulations, attractions will be closed until further notice.

To top this off, the rulebook has several major flubs in it. One error has to do with how players choose the Star Attractions and reassign turn order (which is a non-issue since turn order is not really important in the game given that actions occur mostly simultaneously). The other rules error is on the key that defines what each symbol in the game does. Two of the icons/definitions are swapped. To Kevin Wilson’s credit, he posted about both of these errors on the BoardGameGeek forums and IDW finally posted errata (two months after the game’s release), consisting of printable paste-ups, but this all felt like too little too late. I understand that mistakes happen, but these errors felt more like a lack of attention than anything else. Little Circuses is just another release in the already crowded market, occupying precious shelf space and time from better games. The only redeeming value I see in the game is that because play occurs simultaneously and almost entirely solitarily, you can play with its max player count of 7 while still staying within a 30-40 minute timeframe. Other than that, Little Circuses is likely to suffer the same fate as the real circus and find itself replaced with more polished and modern entertainment.