Threads of Tabriz

Download Mohallah on the App Store

Threads of Tabriz begins with a bare, cream-coloured warp stretched on a big wooden loom. Touch an unfinished spot and swipe across or down, and a glowing thread grows both ways from your fingertip. Reach the edges safely and that stretch of the carpet blooms into woven pattern; if a drifting bundle of loose yarn bumps the thread first, it simply frays and fades, and you try again.

The whole game is one judgment, made over and over. A small cut is safe but claims little cloth; a big cut can transform the screen, but the thread stays exposed for longer. Finish a carpet completely and the next one is waiting, a little quicker than the last. Runs are short, and what a child chases is their own fastest climb through the carpets.

For parents, Threads of Tabriz is patience and foresight dressed as weaving. A struck thread frays gently and nothing is lost: no lives, nothing to buy, no leaderboard, and by the end of a good run the child can see a Persian carpet that exists because of their choices. The setting is a fictionalised workshop in Safavid Tabriz, around 1510 to 1540, when the city was the first Safavid capital and Persian carpet design was reaching its height. The carpets a child weaves are the game's own, not copies of historic pieces.