CirKis

CirKis is a piece placing board game, for two to four players, invented by Phil E. Orbanes and developed by Winning Moves Games USA in 2009. It received the French Game of the Year Award for 2009. The game is based on Penrose tiling.

Gameplay

The game is played on a circular board, which contains the scoring pegs, and has a storage well for each of the four colored sets of pieces. There are 80 total pieces divided into four identical sets of purple, red, green and yellow.

The first player must place a piece inside, or touching, the center circle. Then, every piece played must touch the piece previously placed on the board. So, on a player's turn, he/she must place a piece so it touches the piece that was just played by the previous player.

Players score points by completing circles and stars. If a player has majority of the five segments in the circle or star, he/she scores 10 points. A five point bonus is awarded to the player who completes the shape if they do not have majority in the shape.

A player can earn a free turn - play anywhere, in three ways:

1. If he/she completes the center star
2. If he/she is the first player to use his/her silver piece
3. If he/she places a piece that is completely surrounded and there are no adjacent spots for the other players to play.

Strategy

• Each player has the same exact pieces. There are large pieces that cover three segments of a circle. If a player has the chance to play these, he/she has immediate majority and will score 10 points when the shape is completed. There are no pieces covering three segments in a star.
• The smaller pieces like the arrow and wedge will come in very handy later in the game when trying to navigate out of tight spots.
• Free turns can be very valuable, but if the game results in a tie, the winner is the player with the most amount of pieces remaining. This means that it took less moves for that player to reach 40 points.

Awards

• Grand Prix du Jouet in France
• The Creative Child Award

External links

• Origin of CirKis at Winning Moves USA
• Origin of CirKis at Winning Moves in German
• Official Page on Winning Moves USA Website
• Official You Tube Video Demo by Winning Moves USA