Quilts and Cats of Calico is a colorful pattern-making game where you’re trying to make quilts that attract cats to you.
You are a pattern maker, returning to a city where most of the quilts are now made by a massive loom. There is a war going on, but people believe that the cats will protect them, so they want to create quilts and wearables that bring cats to them. The story itself is interesting; sometimes you’ll gain items and sometimes you’ll just be progressing what is going on, learning more about your lost father and the current state of the town.
The whole design of Quilts and Cats of Calico is quite unique. The level select is a big map where you can move your character around and interact with other people. Some aren’t meant to be spoken to unless you’ve done a specific thing and others need you to help with patterns.
The actual pattern making, I found, is quite challenging. This game could do well with a visual tutorial. The way they introduce new requirements for items is paced well, but I often struggled to understand what they wanted. Suddenly, there were letters on some of the tiles on the quilt, but I didn’t understand how to complete those letters. There are cats that like specific groups or patterns, but no real detail beyond a small image to tell you what they are. I struggled a lot with challenges around placing specific tiles next to others, which I couldn’t even explain now.
Most of the levels have two tiles to choose from in front of you, with a market to the side where you can select one tile after placing a single tile before the next round starts. Connecting three of the same colored tiles, generally, gives you buttons. You can gain more points for these buttons and make a better pattern that would attract more cats. Sometimes cats appear, stealing from your market or forcing you to only place one tile from the market each round, providing for some challenge. There is a hint system that brings you to mid game or to the last placement at the end of a level, so you don’t really need to know how to play (but I wish I did).
There is something charming about the characters and story of Quilts and Cats of Calico, and I do like seeing all of the cats run around the quilt you are creating. You can even make your own cat companion with tons of colors, patterns, and even accessories on them. There is also a versus mode (which you experience in the story by taking on the machine loom), where you need to gain the most buttons.
Quilts and Cats of Calico is available now on the Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, and Steam.
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