Fluxx—No Capacitors Needed!

Review by Jeremiah In 1997, Andrew J. Looney better known as Andy Looney released Fluxx, through his upstart gaming company "Looney Labs." Since then the game has taken off, generating four different editions of "Original Fluxx" and spawning seven different versions of the game, each with its own unique theme and flavor. Not to mention the available expansions for most versions.

We'll be posting reviews of the versions at a later date, but today we'll just cover the original version, known for being the "ever changing card game".

Yes, the game Fluxx, is in a constant state of Fluxx; if you're like some of my gaming friends, honestly this may not be the game for you. The randomness and unpredictability of this game has claimed many a casualty over the years. At the start of the game there is literally NO WAY for anyone to win. The rules are simple: Draw one card, play one card. Through the course of the game, the cards that are played determine the rules, game-play, and goal of the game.

There are several types of cards that can be played -

New Rules: These add different rules to the game; they can be as simple as how many cards you draw/play. Or in some versions they may dictate the type of accent you must speak with in order to gain the ability to draw more cards or gain some sort of advantage.

Actions: Play these cards and do what the card says. They often let you swap a currently desirable card with another player, or snatch that "Rules Reset" card from the discard pile so you can get rid of the large pile of new rules that takes an engineering degree to keep track of.

Keepers: Simply a card is played in front of you that remains in play until something happens to rip it from your clutches. These are often the cards that Goals cards will refer to as an objective for winning the game. By having the right pair of Keepers at the right time you can claim victory, or not. Keepers are typically a card that represents an object: Money, the Sun, Brain, Cookies, Time, Rocket, etc.

Goals: Finally, we know how to win the game! Goals generally require players to have a certain pair of Keepers in front of them in order to win.

Yes, you can win this game by having Milk and Cookies.

Creepers: Creepers are a newer concept to the Fluxx franchise; these are literally cards that creep right out of the draw deck and into your play area. They keep you from winning the game (unless, of course, the current goal, or a New Rule states otherwise), and are a general nuisance. There are only a total of  four of them in Original Fluxx: War, Death, Taxes, and the ever present and dangerous Radioactive Potato!

Most gamers love and/or hate the fact that you constantly have to rethink and adjust your strategy during the game. You could literally be holding the card that would guarantee your victory, and by the time your turn comes around the goal has changed 3 times and someone has stolen that card from you anyway. It is also quite possible that the rules will dictate that you play a card that instantly claims victory...for another player! It happens—deal with it!

This is a great family/youth/group game that supports up to 6 players, and is generally a quick play (I've played games that last as little as 3 minutes or have gone up to 35 minutes). It sells for under $20, and because of the random aspect it has a pretty high ceiling in terms of re-playability.

In case you haven't picked up on this, Fluxx isn't a game for everyone. If you feel the need to plot your strategy out 3-4 turns ahead, you will probably get a little flustered with the game, but for some quick-moving, light-hearted, think-on-your-feet, silly fun, it can't be beat.

To Be Continued...

We've had a great first month of blogetty blogging here at TOG, and we wanted to take a second and say thanks to all of you who have read, shared, liked, retweeted, and commented on our posts here on the blog, as well as our other social media outlets! We sincerely appreciate it, and humbly ask for your continued support! We also thought we'd take a few seconds and give you a sneak peek at what we've got planned for month 2!

So here we go!

We've received a handful of review copies for some games, and we'll be reviewing those soon!

Walls of Light

Glory to Rome

and soon Zombie in my Pocket!

We'll also be reviewing some classics and new games:

Fluxx

Bang!

Mage Knight and more!

And look for our interview with Heartland Hauling Company's designer Jason Kotarski!

All that plus more news, deep thoughts and we'll talk more about our favorite dead CCGs too!

Thanks again for all your support! See you next week!

Step Right UP! - A Carnival Review

It's the fun of shoddy carnival rides without the danger of death or dismemberment! Carnival is a card game that is controlled by dice—which seems odd given this is published by Dice Hate Me Games... It pits players against each other as Carnies trying to build their carnivals before the other players finish theirs. Each player has 5 different attractions placed in front of them, which require 4 different elements to complete construction: Banners, Lights, Seats, and Materials. By completing 4 of the 5 attractions (Bumper Cars, Ferris Wheel, Roller Coaster, Carousel, and Flying Swings) you win!

Turn Sequence - At the beginning of your turn you roll 3d6 (that's gamer speak for three six-sided dice) and choose to use two of them; these dice are placed on a tableau and they give you a corresponding action that you can use at any time during your turn (steal a card from another player's midway, swap a card with another player, swap a midway card, etc.). Players can play any number of cards from their hand into their midway and complete their dice actions, and that is pretty much the turn.

There is a handy little twist though: Each player is given three Admit One tickets at the beginning of the game; they can play these tickets at any time and cancel a dice action that has just been declared. So you can tell your friend to get his grubby little paws off of your Ferris wheel lights! This also results in your opponent losing that action.

The cards, with the exception of wild cards, are all one of the elements needed to build your attractions. That is to say, there are no special ability cards in the game—that's what the dice are for. It works well. It keeps your hand balanced and not full of special cards that do you no good if you have nothing built—or even started—in your midway.

The Bottom Line - The game has a bit of an identity crisis in that it doesn't feel like it should be more than a filler game, but it took us a little too long to play than a filler (I'm guessing subsequent plays will speed things up, though). It's designed for 2-4 players and there are a few variants, such as playing with 4 players in a team-on-team scenario, instead of every man (or woman) for himself. I found it highly competitive as a 4-player game, and things got pretty cutthroat pretty quickly! (Yes, I'm saying that as a positive!) The game includes an expansion pack called "The Sideshow," which we haven't yet busted out, but when we do I'll post a quick review on it!

Free Stuff - Dice Hate Me Games included another little freebie in the game: a single card with the rules for a game they call "Lucky Dice." It's a completely random, up-to-the-roll-of-the-dice type game. Once you've "solved" it, you will go crazy because you never roll what you need to score the most possible points. They did, however, create a free iOS version that you can download right here! Give it a test drive and let us know what ya think!

All in all, you're not going to invest a ton of cash into the game, and if you're playing with the right folks it can get pretty competitive, so it's definitely worth a spin!

Have you played with the Sideshow expansion? What did you think?

Thanks for reading!

Gloom - The Addam's Family of Card Games

Review by Jeremiah.

Gloom, is probably too cheery a name for a game that takes place in a world where "the sky is gray, and the tea is  cold, and a new tragedy lies around every corner." I picked up this game because the gimmicky design hooked me, so I had to give it a try.

Overview - The context of the game is this: Players choose a family to take control of, and the belief of these families is that the more one suffers in this life, the greater the reward is in the sweet by and by. So players take turns playing cards on their characters that will cause them to suffer, thus giving them negative Pathos Points, and then ultimately play a card triggering their untimely death. Meanwhile opponents attempt to play modifying cards on each other that will cheer them up!

End Game - The game is over when a player has successfully made all 5 of their family members as miserable as possible, and then killed them off. The player whose family has the lowest total self worth, wins. I guess. It's kind of like miniature golf in that regard, everyone is miserable and the lowest score wins.

You Said Something About a Gimmick? - Yes, yes I did. The game is printed on plastic, see-through cards. So instead of stacking up modifiers underneath or next to a character, you actually place modifying cards on top of the character card. These modifying cards have 3 different locations in which they can add or subtract from your Pathos Points; playing certain cards may cover up points or add to them depending on the location. It's very cool looking. However we found it very hard to read the cards on a darker table top, so we used blank sheets of printer paper as a play mat for each player, and the cards popped right off the table! There are also "Story Icons" on some cards, which add some card synergy to the game; having matching icons will again add or subtract Pathos Points and again these can be covered by other icons or just blanked out completely.

Well... Did You Like It? - Yes. And, no. The game designer, Keith Baker, really put out a solid effort on this one. The game plays pretty well, the mechanics don't feel gimmicky even though they could easily let the clear cards be the selling point. It's strategic and competitive, but beyond that the flavor text included in the rules goes great distances to ensure that the game is more than just laying small rectangular pieces of see-through plastic on the table. There is a somewhat lengthy description of the "world of Gloom," as well as the families players can take control of. And further still players are encouraged to story-tell during game play. So instead of simply playing a card and saying, "Okay, so that's minus 15," you're encouraged to play your card and explain that your character "Was out late one night and made a poor decision to order the Pu-Pu platter at the Chinese Restaurant and therefore was - Distressed by Dysentery - giving him negative 15 points!" This is great. And can be fun and entertaining with the right players in the game! The aspect of this that doesn't ring true with me is that there are cards that become a little too gloomy for my taste: Chastised by the Church, Pestered by Poltergeists, Hunted by Horrors, etc. The game is intended to be cartoony and humorous in a dark way, but in some ways, for me, it gets a little too dark at times. Of course, I don't know what else one would expect when a game's goal is to maim and kill your own characters.

The End -  Since its release Atlas has added 3 expansions, each of which adds a family, and therefore the ability to add players to the game. The game plays well, but raises many flags for me on the content side of things; tread carefully with this one, or check it out at your local game shop before picking it up!

Am I way off on this? I'd love to hear your opinions and experiences with Gloom, leave them in the comments below! And as always, thanks for reading!

Gloom is on Amazon if you dare!

More Free Stuff!

Earlier this week we reviewed a fun little party game called, What's it to Ya? Today we launch a contest to win yourself a free copy!

So, here's how it works, it's pretty simple, just follow this link RIGHT HERE! And like our Facebook page to enter! And that's it!

We'll close entries at midnight on Friday Aug. 3rd, so head on over and get your entries in!

Thanks for reading! We'd love to hear your feedback on what's going on here at TOG, please leave your comments here, or on the Facebook page!

And don't forget to follow us  on Twitter, we'd love to chat with our readers! @JeremiahIsley, @Firestone and @TheologyofGames

What's it to Ya?

No really... "What's it to ya?" Today we're looking at "What's it to Ya?" a nifty little party game about "What matters most." Shortly after the blog went live we were contacted by Mike Petty, who designed the game not only to entertain but to get families, students, and folks in ministry talking about priorities and, well...what matters most. He sent a few copies our way, and so today we're taking a look at the two distinct sides of this coin.

The Game - The game-play is simple; it truly is a party game. But because of the

simplicity, Petty was able to include 3 different variants of the rules, Individual play, Partnership play, and "What's it to..." Any way you play it, the idea is the same. Players will be ranking 5 item cards from highest to lowest in importance to them.

The Items - Think of these like Apples to Apples green cards. Only not so much in the specific or proper nouns that they deal with, but more generalized concepts. Anything from anti-drug laws, to prayer, to clothes, to leadership or numbers.

Ranking Cards - each player (or partnership depending on your preferred method of play) will be given a set of 5 ranking cards. These simply have a rank of A-E on them. One set will be used on the table.

Game-Play - We'll start with the partnership game, this is the version that seems to get off the ground quicker and creates some fun and insightful and "I can't believe you think that!" moments at the table.

So here's how it works, you'll set up by handing out ranking cards to the teams, and then put one set of ranking cards in the middle of the table. Then you deal 5 items from the deck, placing each of  them next to 1 of the 5 ranking cards.

While writing this I just drew 5 random cards, so the table would look like this:

A - Realistic Expectation B - Family C - Electricity D - Pleasure E - News

Now, the teams decide who will guess and who will be "The Boss" first. (And yes, you will probably hear "like a boss..." more than once because of this) the boss takes the ranking cards and places them in order of importance SECRETLY,  in their own personal ranking from left to right. You then take turns having the team's "guesser" try to guess the order, starting with most important. The team with the most matches scores a point for that round. If there's a tie, each team gets a point. And if you go 5 for 5 you score 2. Players switch roles and you do another round. You can play as many or as few rounds as you want, they suggest a game to 7 points though.

By nature of elimination you'll find that to score 5 of 5 is really only to score 4 of 5, because once you've scored the 4th there is only one answer left. It's still a difficult feat, but it's not a true 5 for 5...

The Individual Game - This variant operates the same way, but the scoring is different, instead of players guessing to match their partner, they instead individually rank the items, and score by having the most popular answer.  In my above example that means if there are 5 players and 3 say Electricity is the most important then they score that card for the round - and a healthy amount of quizzical looks from around the table - again having the most matching popular answers scores you a point for the round, and a 5 for 5 scores 2.

The What's it to...? Game - This version is more of a just-for-fun version with no real scoring. In this version you put someone in the "hot seat" as it were, and they are given a set of ranking cards. Each other player is trying to guess the order of the items as ranked by the person in the hot seat. Players take turns being in the hot seat and are asked to be honest about their ranking, not just to try and throw everyone off!

The Teachable Moments - As I said above, there's more to this than just the game-play, and that's the heart of what this game is about. Is it fun? YES! The group of students I played this with had a blast, and asked to borrow it from me! We had many laughs, and a few cringing moments when someone guessed wrong. But the conversations that can come out of the game are numerous; after a few rounds I had the students make their guess for their partner and also tell why they were picking that item in that rank." I could also easily see using the game with pre-determined items, and revolving a series of Sunday school lessons around those items and the priorities we place on them.

The Bottom Line - For a party game "What's it to Ya?" is exactly what I look for in party games: super light in terms of game play and mechanisms. With little to no housekeeping. It supplies good entertainment and lots of laughs, whether you want to laugh or take the conversation deeper it sets the table for both! If you're a parent, a small group leader, or a person in ministry I recommend grabbing a copy and starting some conversations with the people you love.

You can pick up a copy of "What's it to Ya?" Super cheap RIGHT HERE!

Petals to the Metal: A Review of Flowerfall

One of the sleeper hits of Origins was a game that didn’t even exist just a few shorts weeks before the event. Carl Chudyk is the man behind the very good game Glory To Rome, and the good-but-ridiculous-ending game Innovation. And just before Origins he had an idea for a game about dropping cards with flowers on them onto a table. So they printed up 100 copies on simple card stock, and one of my friends was able to score one.

There are five different colors of cards, and each person gets an identical set of cards with their color of flowers on them. Some cards have only one flower on them, while others have five or six.

The object of the game is to create “gardens” by dropping your cards onto the table, and having the majority of your flowers at the end of the game. Of course, the other players are trying to do the same thing.

You drop the cards from shoulder height onto the table, so it’s pretty hard to drop them with any amount of skill. Every game feels like a little bit of skill mixed with a whole lot of luck.

Despite that, the game is pretty unique and fun. It’s a good filler for the beginning or end of a night—or when you’re waiting for other people to wrap up a game. And it’s really portable. And it’s about flowers, so the likelihood of my wife playing this over…say…a game about the Lord of the Rings is huge.

If you weren’t fortunate to be one of the 100 people who scored a copy of the 1^st printing, there’s good news: There’s a Kickstarter campaign for a proper edition. You can find it here, but be aware it ends Friday at midnight. It’s overfunded, so it will be produced, and you can get a copy for a mere $15.

Pixel Lincoln Kickstarts!

Springboard, which is powered by Game Salute, has been running (and very successfully) a Kickstarter campaign for gaming's newest addition to the family of 8-bit, side-scrolling, deck-building, card games based on a fictional video game, which is based on a historical figure. (I know, another one of THOSE!) Who's Backing the Beard Built of Blocks? - There are nearly 600 gamers who have caught wind of this unique game. I mean, who doesn't want a chance to take on the role of our emancipating and proclamating president to fight various baddies, like Puking Turtles and Throwing Luchadores, with a variety of weapons, including the Sausage Link Whip, and Abe's favorite means of self defense, the Beardarang!

So, Why Back it? - The question came up here at TOG: Why would we back this now; why shouldn't we just wait for the retail release? So I emailed Springboard and asked what backers were going to be getting that folks who just bought the title after release wouldn't. And Dan laid it out like this:

Motivational Factor #1 -

Backers will receive the following:

The Game - Which continues to be upgraded as stretch goals are met!

The Bonuses Pack - Which currently includes, a button, the Sentinels of the Multiverse Pixel Sentinels cards (which look sweet!), the Celebrity Cards Pack, and a shiny new penny!

There's a good breakdown on the Kickstarter page, and lots of cool options and add-ons you can choose to pick up if you back the game.

Motivational Factor #2 -  It's mutually beneficial, in that with every stretch goal they meet, it adds more features to the game's base set; once the campaign closes, what you get is what you get, so backing now helps everyone win!

The good news in all of this is that they have met their base goal, and the project will be funded. That means Pixel Lincoln is on his way! The bad news is that you only have until midnight on Sunday, July 15, 2012 to scrape together your shiny pennies and back them to get all the extra goodies!

You can see all the fun videos, and backer levels by clicking RIGHT HERE!

Have you backed this? Have you demoed the game? We would LOVE to hear your thoughts! Leave 'em in the comments!

A Comic Book, Card Game? Yes, Please!

Over at Greater than Games, they've started taking pre-orders for Sentinels of the Multiverse: Enhanced Edition. Which will release at GenCon next month. If you can't wait that long you can pick up a first edition "Scratch and Dent" for only $19.99 over here. Or a shiny new copy here! We're looking forward to grabbing a copy of the game and sharing our thoughts with all of you; it has the makings of a great title: comic-book-type heroes, a slew of baddies, and your chance to save the day with your friends!

Greater than Games successfully ran a Kickstarter for the enhanced edition, and will be shipping to their supporters soon! For the rest of us, we'll have to wait until the game releases next month.

Do you have the first edition? Did you support the Kickstarter? We'd love to hear your thoughts; leave 'em in the comments!

I'm A Liar: Hesitance About the Resistance

One of my favorite games of the last few years is The Resistance. This terrific little card game takes everything that's good about games like Battlestar Galactica, Werewolf, and Mafia and boils them down to a 20-minute gem. Depending on the number of players, there will be a certain number of people who are members of The Resistance—you can call it the Rebel Alliance if that’s easier. But what makes it interesting is that a few people are also spies for the evil Empire. The spies know who each other are, but the members of the Alliance have no clue. That’s the short version, but you get the idea. For the long version, read my review here.

Like most games with a traitor, it’s just more fun to be a spy. But the thing that has me questioning my love for the game is this: When I’m a spy, I lie. A lot. And I'm super good at it. I’m not sure what to do with that.

I tell myself it’s okay, because I’m playing a role—like an actor. It’s not me who’s lying, it’s Bolt Vanderhuge—spy.

Is lying wrong in the context of a game? Is it wrong when everyone understands that there are spies, and those spies are supposed to lie? Am I applying legalism rather than common sense here? Am I trying to find a "loophole" so I can do something I'm against without feeling guilty? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Throw me a comment!

Want to win a free copy of The Resistance? Enter our Contest and win! Click Here for more details!