Touch the cloth
Pick a cell inside the hoop and the needle travels there and leaves a cross. One stitch runs at a time and three more can wait behind it. Thread is awarded when the stitch is stamped, never at the click.
In development · Desktop
Needlings
restore what was forgotten
In a candlelit workshop you set one stitch at a time into the bare cloth stretched in the hoop. The faded pattern printed on it never tells you what to do — it only sees what you did. The colours are not there: they are on a parchment that takes both your hands. You study it, you put it down, you work from memory. That gap is the game.
Active-idleYou choose, the needle works
Single-playerNo ladder, no opponent
SteamStore page soon
The Loop
One stitch. Then another.
There is no way to go faster — only ways to work better. Each stitch takes a beat, and pays out when it lands, not when you click.
The supply runs down
Every stitch spends one of your Thread Supply, and the spool refills slower than stitching drains it. With none left, taps do nothing: you either wait, or you learn to waste less.
Hands that help
Every animal you free stays on the bench and does its own work: one stitches while you are away, another will take over the unpicking. You are still the one at the hoop — they simply work the way you do.
The Pattern
The pattern never restricts you. It judges you.
Every cell inside the cloth stays stitchable in any thread. You can stitch outside the fox, or in the wrong colour — and the game notices rather than prevents it.
CorrectThe pattern wanted this cell, in this thread.
Wrong colourThe pattern wanted this cell in a different thread. It does not count as progress: it stays owed.
StrayThe pattern wanted this cell left bare. It stays there until it is unpicked.
Study it, put it down, work from memory
The coloured chart is not on the cloth. It is on a parchment you hold up — and while it is raised both hands are on the paper, so stitching and marking are blocked.
A washable pencil lets you transcribe what you saw. Those marks are notes, not game state — nothing checks them, so a mistranscribed mark leads to a genuinely wrong stitch.
The Waking
The animal in the chart is not a picture.
It is a creature trapped in thread, and finishing its stitches is what lets it out.
Wake the thread
When every cell the pattern asked for is filled in the right thread, the ordinary furniture steps back and one button rises in the clear strip of bench. The press writes the whole thing down at once: the stitches lift off the cloth, the sheet crosses to the middle of the screen, loses the hoop's tilt on the way, and breathes.
Everything after that press is presentation. A ceremony that is interrupted costs nothing: what was earned had already been paid.
And it steps onto the bench
The animal lets go of its shape, takes its first breath and introduces itself: its name, its trade and what it is offering you. Accept and it starts working beside you; decline and it is still yours.
The introduction happens once. Every finished tapestry enters the collection and that animal is never earned twice: the cloth goes back up, the companion stays.
Where it stands today
Needlings is in development. The workshop, the hoop, the pattern's judgement, the reference scroll, the pencil, the waking ceremony and the collection all run — every image on this page was taken from the working game. More patterns and companions are being drawn and a second, freer mode is on the way; unpicking and the tapestries after these are the next work.
Screens
From the workshop.
All from the running game — click to open one.
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By design
Made to be quiet.
A game in no hurry. Nothing chases you, and nothing punishes you for being away.
Three save slotsThree separate tapestries in the menu's drawer, and none of them can be started over the top of another.
Nothing is lostThe work is written once a second while you stitch, again when the window loses focus, and again as the game closes.
A prologue you can skipA new game opens on a page of old parchment: ten drawings drawn stroke by stroke with a line or two under each. Hold any key and it steps aside.
A bad save is never half-loadedA payload that is corrupt or from an older schema is discarded rather than partly loaded, and the menu draws that slot as a corrupted save.
Coming soon
We'll write when the hoop is ready
Needlings is coming to Steam. Leave your email and we'll write when the store page opens and when the beta starts — nothing else.