Nutgoo.Lee’s Blancat made my seven-year-old cry. I know. That’s a movable bar. She was tired from a long day of playing in the sun, but she wanted to try the “kittie quilting game” anyway. It ended in tears. That’s on me, not Blancat, and certainly it isn’t on Nutgoo.Lee.

But here’s the thing: she practices at Blancat. She sits on her own at the table and studies the little templates and does her best to craft the quilts. She’s played plenty of other board games. She even has her favorites. Right now, that means Barbecubes and A Gentle Rain. Tactile stuff, not all that far removed from Blancat, but simpler, with lighter stakes. This is the first game I’ve seen that’s made her studious. The first game that’s meant to be challenging. Her intensity makes me wonder if there’s something here that I didn’t see right away. They say children let you see the world through new eyes. It seems the same goes for board games.

Everything you need to make a blanket.

Blancat is about making blankets for cats. It’s a simple concept. You draw a card that shows a pattern. Everybody races to make the pattern, folding strips of stiff paper over and under one another. Upon completing your blanket, you grab a kitten. Last one out is a rotten egg. Then you play again. Nominally, there’s a scoring system. Honestly, we’ve never bothered. It’s the sort of game you play until the little ones want to do something else.

I’m not opposed to simplicity. Indeed, simplicity is often a synonym for elegant. But there’s a tendency in this hobby to hoist a ceiling over certain games. Too simple and the game is for kids. Too small we’ll cap its rating at 7/10 on BGG. It doesn’t matter whether this is our most-played game of all time. It’s still not a serious game. Because it’s small. Because it’s simple.

Blancat is both small and simple. But watching my seven-year-old play it, I can tell you it’s the most serious exercise ever devised.

Blancat works for kids, but the advanced templates are surprisingly hard to craft.

There are two types of patterns, separate decks that offer vastly different degrees of challenge. The easy deck fits the description. As long as you have the gross motor skills of a toddler, you’ll get there.

But the hard deck is nasty. It isn’t enough to just fold down those strands willy-nilly. A successful pattern takes forethought. Blue over yellow. Red tucked between two strands, then folded upward. Blue back through the yellow and the red… wait. How exactly is this supposed to work? For twelve cardboard flaps, there’s surprising tactility at play. A strand that seemed like it went here might suddenly need to go there. A ribbon that was previously buried might become crucial, necessitating a last-second excavation. I’ve had easier times sewing actual quilts, and that’s no boast.

There’s an element of muscle memory to these challenges. It’s like playing with a Rubik’s Cube. At first, you’re just fiddling. Only later do you develop the sense for how to move things around. Eventually, it becomes second nature. To such a degree, in fact, that the whole thing stops being impressive and becomes an exercise in rote execution. When’s the last time you were impressed with somebody solving a Rubik’s Cube? I had a friend who could solve one while bouncing on a trampoline. Ten or fewer bounces, I think.

Three little kitties.

Of course, it’s all relative. Put that Rubik’s Cube in the hands of a child. Now we’re cooking. Because Blancat isn’t rote for my seven-year-old. Not yet.

For adults, Blancat is about speed. Such speed that I worry those little paper flaps will tear. Such speed that it’s like watching my high school friend take the highest, laziest bounces on the trampoline, so high and lazy he could spin that Rubik’s Cube a dozen times before his feet returned to the mesh. It was fun trick to watch, the once.

But with her? With my youngest kiddo? For her, it isn’t about speed. It’s about deliberation. It’s about thinking through this new logic. It’s also about kittens, because she loves kittens. But when she’s in that zone, the strands worked in her little fingers, even the kittens become secondary. She stops grabbing them for a hug. Instead, she’s all focus, weaving one flap over the other, pausing in confusion when something doesn’t line up, reversing her decisions, reassessing.

Watching her play Blancat is like watching her grow up in time-lapse. Her brain making new connections in real-time. Her fingers growing more limber. Her sense of self forming a new confidence. It makes my sternum watery. To see her. To feel such awe at her. To wonder at the span of us, our human family, striking flint into tinder, the spark igniting liftoff for a rocket ship. We grow up so fast.

Snug as a bug in a rug.

Blancat. That’s what we’re talking about.

Is it a good game? I have no idea. I think it is. For what it is. For a game that’s simple and small, but also surprisingly large. For a game that’s one thing to adults and another thing entirely to children. For a game about folding strips of paper ribbon over and under one another. For a game with wide-eyed kittens on its cover.

Honestly, I don’t really care about all that. What I care about is the way my child studies its ribbons, folding and folding, and then, when the pattern is done, reaches out and plucks a wooden cat from the table, and places it atop the quilt, and then, in a voice so quiet I can tell it’s reserved for herself alone, whispers in triumph, “Meow.”

A complimentary copy of Blancat was provided by the publisher.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read the next installment in my series Talking About Games, this time tackling the topic of what makes a good list! Naturally, the piece includes a list.)