Can you smell the roasted peanuts in the air? Is that a lion’s roar in the distance? The circus has come to town and they’re here to wow the crowd!

Little Circuses is a special game to me for a number of reasons, the first being that it presents us with another opportunity to work with game designer Kevin Wilson (Descent, TMNT), whose games are constantly among my favorites to get to the table, including this new title. The second thing that makes Little Circuses so special is that it's the first game in our “Table For Seven” line, which is a new company initiative to get more strategic 7-player games into the market. This will be the first in what will be a robust and entertaining line of games for people who have high player count groups and don’t want to just play party games on game night. Little Circuses can play anywhere from 1-7 players in roughly 45-minutes.

Little Circuses tells the story of John Little, the greatest ringmaster the land has ever known. He’s built his “Little Circus” into a respectable big top with a number of devoted fans scattered over several cities, but know it’s time for John to step down and hand the reigns to one of his seven children. Players will take on the role of one of those children, tasked with the job of running one portion of the circus for a month as it runs its final tour under John’s control. The sibling that can best keep the crowds entertained and the cashboxes full will be the winner and will be handed the reigns of the entire show!

Each player begins the game with a small circus board that they’ll add onto over the course of the month. The initial board is full of simple attractions like cotton candy machines and hot dog carts, but as they win over the crowd and earn their father’s trust, players will have the opportunity to draft lion tamers, human cannonballs, contortionists, clowns, and all the other thrilling and chilling attractions that make a trip to the circus so memorable!

Much of the play is simultaneous, which means the game doesn’t slow even at high player counts. In testing, it’s proven to work incredibly well with very little auditing of your neighbor needed. Each round players will typically have the ability to build new attractions on their circus, and then focus the spotlight on the attraction they’d like the crowd to attend that day. Doing this will provide players bonuses in either fame, money, or general crowd enjoyment. As the players are able to grow the crowds watching their events they can eventually cash-in by charging big bucks when they turn the spotlight onto one of their key attractions. It’s all about focusing on timing and planning the perfect combination of play.

As play continues, your circus will move from town to town, spending a few days in each as you complete your tour from Startertown to Endsville. There’s a clever spatial element to the planning of your circus board, as each day you’ll highlight one attraction and then move equilaterally around your board every turn to new attractions within your circus for each day you spend in a city. Afterall, fans get tired of seeing the same old thing, so you’ll need to build your board in a way that you can navigate from attraction to attraction, gaining points in the right areas at key moments.

And, of course, no circus would be complete without its Star Attractions, and Little Circuses is full of the biggest acts in the business! From Primeval Knievel the monkey daredevil to Mesmerius: Master of the mind to Ralph the Janitor (you really gotta just see this guy work), each week when players bring their traveling show to a new town, they’ll also have the opportunity to select their Star Attraction for that town. These extra special VIP performers bring an additional asymmetric power to the game for that week.

There’s actually 14 different Star Attractions in the game — one set of Attractions keeps players mostly focused on growing their own circuses into bustling businesses, while the other set introduces a more interactive “take-that” aspect to the game. In this way, (Kevin) Wilson grants the players the ability to adjust their game depending on player count and how much interaction their group likes to have with each other.

The interior artwork for the game was produced by Hector Amavizca, and he created more than 100 pieces of original art to make sure that by the end of each game players will be looking at a very different tableau than their neighbors. Each piece has the light-hearted whimsy and fun that emanates through every aspect of the game. The cover art for the game was created by the incomparable Baldi Konijn, who we’re greatly looking forward to working with as readily as possible.

A game of Little Circuses passes by as quickly as a summer afternoon in the park, and is just as refreshing. There’s even a solo mode for those times when you want to go have some fun, but your gamer group are too afraid of clowns to join you.

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Nate Murray is the Product Manager for IDW Games. He likes blue cotton candy (and can tell the difference in flavor between colors) and hotdogs with mustard and relish, but thinks deep-fried Oreos are excessive. Nate prefers magicians to clowns, but doesn’t judge those who disagree.