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Home Board & Card Games Review: Fluxx – The Board Game

Review: Fluxx – The Board Game

by Adam Stewart

Popular card game Fluxx, which originally came out in 1996, attempts to make it as a board game in this re-imagined version, is it successful however?….

Playing The Game

Fluxx Board Game

Fluxx Board Game

Fluxx prides itself in letting you know that the only constant is change, which you think would make for a thrilling and ever-changing game. Only one of these assumptions is correct. The game is constantly changing, but what this actually does is make the game incredibly difficult to like or keep your attention, especially when it’s not your go.

You initially start with the center tile, which you then place the eight shuffled spaces tiles around. Each of these spaces tiles has a selection of different images of recognizable things such as bread, cookies, the sun etc. The idea of the game is to get 2 of your 4 pieces to the squares which match the pictures on the goal card at that given moment. When you claim the amount of goals needed to win, indicated on the peg board, you win. Simple, right? Wrong. The peg board has 7 different factors of the game that you can mess around which are controlled by what cards you have in your hand. How many cards you can have in your hand is governed by a peg as is how many cards you can draw and how many you can play. It also has how many places your pieces can move, whether you can rotate the tiles, move them or allow pieces to wrap around the board.

If you’re still following this, you’re doing  better job than me and my 3 friends when we attempted to learn the game from the 3 page instructions book. Granted we had had a glass or two of wine, but the game is marketed at ages 8+….

Game Pieces

In the game each player has their four pieces, all the same colour and shape. These are all placed in the center start tile.

You also have a pack of cards which you pick up from on your go. There are 4 types of card; Leaper, New Rule, Action and Goal.

  1. Leaper let’s you jump straight away to a specific space, useful is that space is one of the pictures on the goal card.
  2. Action let’s you perform some kind of action for that go only, such as pick up 3 extra cards.
  3. Goal allows you to add a new goal to the goal space which you can play to help yourself or stop a fellow player winning the current goal card as this goal becomes the new goal.
  4. New Rule allows you to move those darn pegs around and create all kinds of mess and confusion.

Note: Even the colour you are playing as can change, so there are colour cards to indicate which colour you are too.

There are no dices in this game. On your turn you simply move the number of spaces indicated on the peg board. You can move any of your four pieces but this must total the maximum amount of places you can move. So for instance if you can only move 4 places you could move one piece 1 space and another 3 spaces.

Conclusion

Whilst the idea behind the game is interesting, in practise it becomes too much to think about and you lose interest. If it isn’t your go you have to watch the whole ordeal of picking up cards, playing cards, moving spaces and if necessary discarding cards or changing the whole board around. This can feel very slow and a little boring to endure.

There is also no real reward for winning, as you don’t feel you achieved anything to win. For me personally, just playing the game, understanding it and managing to pay attention is achievement enough. As a family game I fear it just doesn’t offer enough to entertain. Luckily a game only lasts 15-30 mins, so you can get back to far more interesting things, like the ironing.

4/10 – Fun can be had, if you grasp the concept. Although there is little to keep you interested.

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