- CirKis – the captivating game of circles and stars and it’s so easy, anyone can play but can you win
- Players take turns placing a piece on the board next to the last piece played. Completing circles and stars scores points
- The first player to score 40 points wins the game
- The game can also end if one player plays his/her final piece or if no further plays are available
- Playing time is 15 minutes and up
Product Description
Cir*Kis is the newest, and best, piece-placing game. You’ll score by completing circles and stars on the eye-catching game board. Plan ahead and you could earn a free turn to place another piece an score big! Ages: 8 and up, Players: 2 to 4. Contents: Dimensional plastic game board unit 4 sets of 20 colorful playing pieces 4 scoring pegs and illustrated instructionsAmazon.com Review
CirKis is a fun, award-winning game in which players take turn… More >>
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I’d like to know who wrote those 5-star reviews in November and early December that convinced me to buy this for a holiday gift. Like other more recent reviewers, I’ve found it to be very disappointing.
I played a game with our 9-year-old, and once was enough for both of us. If you have anything else available to do, you’ll probably enjoy it more than this. So, with a bunch of other Christmas presents around, this one has seen the least action.
They give you a game board with four trays for your pieces, but as the instructions say, you’ll want to spread them out so you can see what you have available to work with. That only helps up to a point, and in the meantime they are now easier to knock onto the floor and lose. Missing pieces would pretty much kill the playability of the game from a strategic standpoint.
People keep mentioning Blokus, which I think is far superior. The Cirkis board has a goofy combination of stars and circles — as well as odd-shaped in-between spaces. Only certain pieces can be placed at certain points on the board.
By huge contrast, Blokus pieces are all made up of squares joined together, and the board is just a grid of squares. In principle, any piece can be played anywhere on the board. That allows you to work on the game strategy without wasting mental energy on figuring out whether you have any pieces left in your tray that can fit in a star, or circle, or “sliver” or whatever.
Put another way — the “strategy” in Cirkis is dictated more than 50% by the pieces you have available, while in Blokus, strategy is dictated mostly by how you play your pieces.
I found the Cirkis scoring explanations to be confusing and silly. And using a peg to keep track of that score in a series of holes, I don’t get that at all. Also, as others have noted, you can easily lose the plastic pegs.
I could check, but I think somebody here misread the rules. I don’t think you get 15 minutes per player per turn. I think the little clock on the game box suggests that you will get about 15 minutes (or more) of play out of a single game in its entirety. This allows you to decide whether to get that box down from the shelf, instead of longer games like Monopoly or Risk or Chess.
I bought this partly because (like others) I got snookered by the early hype and the presumed similarity to the other game already discussed — but mostly because it was on sale for about half price. I am really glad I did not pay the “list” price, or even the current Amazon price which is slightly discounted.
I suppose if a person were to spend a lot of time getting used to the peculiar design of the board and the shapes, and find a partner willing to really care at all about the silly strategy, maybe one could get more fun out of it. Maybe. But not me, and not most people, I think.
Also, it’s possible that a child might, repeat might get some kind of intellectual stimulation out of figuring out the spatial relationships between the pieces and the shapes on the board. But I don’t think they need game play to accomplish that, which is why I likened it to a toy. I think a child might just play around with the pieces and make colored designs on the board, and be reasonably entertained.
But that’s not a reason to buy it! For a good strategy game get Blokus Classics Game (regular old Blokus) instead if you don’t already have it. Or hey, how about Chess…
Rating: 2 / 5
I own Blokus and really enjoy it, so I thought this would be similar.
Pros: Short duration — can play in 10-20 minutes. Bright colors.
Cons: Slow-paced. Difficult to understand board layout, objective and scoring. We played two or three times before we were able to play without referring to the rules/scoring sheet over and over again. It is a quiet, thinking “game”, yet it is more luck of the draw that determines what piece you can play and, hence, how many points you will get. Like Blokus, playing with less than four players ruins the game and significantly decreases play options and any chance at strategy.
Summary: Not recommended as a fun or a family game. I may not even keep my own game and have no idea what to do with the extra one I bought as a potential gift.
Rating: 2 / 5
Our family loves games like Blokus – and according to early reviews of this game it seemed like it would be equally engaging. Not so. The limitation of having to “follow the leader” when you place your pieces as well as the truly complicated scoring system (I have to keep referring to the directions) makes this game a dud in our opinion.
The concept of having the scoring on the gameboard is decent, but I know the 4 small pegs will get lost quickly. It is also difficult to see all the shaped pieces while they are in the tray. You basically have no idea what shapes you have until you pick them up.
My 8 year old enjoys chess & blokus but this game after being played just once was a total bore. Which is a bummer because this was a gift from a Santa who tries to do a lot of research before choosing games. I’d pass on this one. It’s going on the shelf for a long while.
Rating: 2 / 5
“It’s so easy, anyone can play…but can you win?” is the caption that reads on the box. It claims to be “the captivating game of circles and stars.” Suggested age was 8 so I purchased it for my 11 year old who loves strategy games. Big Mistake and definite waste of money. My son was not amused and most certainly did not enjoy playing.
Opening the box, you find cheap plastic pieces and a plastic board (negative) but it is easily stowed back in the box (positive). There is one very simple sheet of instructions that takes but a moment to read and then you are ready to play. That’s where the simplicity ends and the difficulty begins. This is not a game for your average child or adult. It definitely is for those who enjoy games like Chess and other slow-moving strategy games to a certain extent. Each player is allowed 15 minutes for their turn and, not surprisingly, most will need every moment of that 15 minutes to make a move. The game pieces are hard to make out when trying to find a “fit” for the board. They come in all sorts of wacky shapes and sizes and will take a lot of your patience as you try to learn how they work with the board. The object of the game is to be the one to complete a circle or star to earn your points. The players became very frustrated and felt limited on moves they could make. There was much arguing on whether or not pieces truly had to be “touching” as some of the pieces fit the board perfectly next to another piece but did not come in contact with the neighboring piece. With the frustration levels running high, the game was stowed away after a few pieces were placed on the board by each player. It will end up stowed away in our attic until we find someone who is remotely interested in playing the game. I would recommend stopping at a game store to “try-out” the game before you attempt to purchase it. I wish I had.
Rating: 2 / 5
Played this at a friend’s house and will order my own copy of it from amazon. It’s superficially similar to Blokus, but it’s really its own thing. Pieces fit together well and it looks reasonably durable.
Game play? It’s easy to get up and running with the game in just a couple of minutes. But the strategy to be good at the game is quite intensive. We found it to be quite addictive as new ideas for new strategies percolated. Friendly and playable by both kids and adults. The game recommendation of age eight to adult seems reasonable to me. I’m sure my ten year old daughters will be interested in this game.
Time will tell if this game really catches on, I think it’s new for the holiday season of 2009. But it has great potential for being a classic game. Easy to learn but hard to master as the box says.
Rating: 5 / 5