Star Fluxx & Cthulhu Fluxx - Playable Geek Culture!

Straight to the point: these versions of Fluxx are wonderfully geeky and a lot of fun to play!

So a few months ago, my partner and I stumbled upon a new YouTube series: Table Top featuring the geek-tastic Wil Wheaton. We’d both loved playing board games as kids, but were a little bored with Monopoly. This series introduced us to a load of games with geeky themes that got us back into tabletop gaming in a big way. One of the games they showcased on the show was Star Fluxx, which we decided to buy along with its sister-game, Cthulhu Fluxx. Here’s what we thought…

The Basics

As you might guess from the title, Fluxx is the game where the rules are always changing.

At the beginning, you draw a card and play a card each turn. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, here’s where things get complicated. There are several different types of cards, here’s a rundown of what they are, and what they do:

Keeper: You play these cards by putting them in front of you. You win by having the right keepers to fulfil the…

Goal: The player who fulfils the conditions of the goal currently in play wins, but there are no guarantees – the goal keeps changing, much like the…

Rules: These change the number of cards you draw and play per turn, and can impose keeper or card limits, which means you can be forced to discard cards you wanted to keep.

Surprise: Surprise cards are cards you can play outside of your turn and can cancel certain actions. This means when you try to steal another person’s keeper, it can backfire and they’ll get to steal one of yours.

Creepers: These guys are bad news. You draw a creeper; you HAVE to play it immediately. It attaches itself to one of your keepers, can stop any special abilities they have and stop you from winning even if you meet the requirements of the goal.

There are loads of different varieties, but we played Star Fluxx and Cthulhu Fluxx.

Star Fluxx

In Star Fluxx all the goals, keepers and creepers have a sci-fi theme. Explore the depths of the galaxy and avoid brain parasites, but watch out…It’s a trap! (Yes, that is genuinely the name of one of the surprise cards). And that, incidentally, is one of the most attractive aspects of this version: the blatantly obvious attempts to avoid copyright infringement are hysterical. Card titles include a ‘laser sword’, the ‘expendable crewman’ and the ‘intergalactic travel guide’.

Cthulhu Fluxx

Cthulhu Fluxx is (unsurprisingly) set in the H. P. Lovecraft universe, and most of the goals are titles of his short stories. You battle the unsettling forces of the Elder Gods while trying not to go mad. One of the best things about this version of Fluxx is its faithfulness to the spirit of Lovecraftian horror which is maintained through the addition of an extra type of card:

Ungoal: These cards are unique to Cthulhu Fluxx. If the conditions for this type of card are met, the Elder Gods win instead of any of the players.

There is an optional meta-rule which you can choose to follow if you want to determine a winner in the event of an Ungoal, but we felt that Lovecraft would have wanted the doom of all mankind to be a legitimate possibility.

Things We Liked

To be honest, there wasn’t much we disliked about Fluxx.

Most importantly, both versions are really fun to play. You don’t really have all that much control over who wins or what happens, so you just have to laugh about what’s going on. Star Fluxx in particular is great for the fun dimension because the plagiarism is so striking its funny and the characters and items are so embedded in popular culture that they’re easily recognisable.

They’re never boring. We’ve played them so many times, and no game is the same. You won’t end up with the same person winning every time because so much of the game depends on luck of the draw. Everything can change in an instant - there can be one person with a load of keepers who you expect to win and then someone plays a card that completely levels the playing field. It definitely keeps you on your toes.

There are so many different kinds of Fluxx set in different genres and universes that there’s one to suit everyone’s tastes. You can play through some of the greatest aspects of geek culture in a fun, light-hearted way.

The Stuff That’s Not So Good

There’s really only one problem with Fluxx: while it’s not difficult to play, the rules are difficult to explain to new players, which can put them off. These are such great games, but they can seem a little daunting at first.

That being said, once you start playing it’s relatively easy to pick up. All the cards have instructions for how to play them written on the card to stop you from getting stuck.

Conclusion

Overall, I love these games. The thing I look for most in a game is something that’s really fun to play, and Fluxx definitely fits into that category. Whether you’re playing with just two people, as my partner and I do on an almost daily basis now (yeah – THAT good), or as part of a larger group of friends you’ll find yourself laughing and, in all probability, shouting about all the changes happening around you as control gets taken away.

The best thing for me, though, was the way this game has brought me and my partner together as a couple. It’s given us a chance to interact during the time we spend together rather than sitting in front of a film without really talking. That social aspect of gaming (of all kinds) is so important, and it is so often overlooked in the popular imagination. Games can improve our communication, problem-solving and social skills; they are a means by which we form and improve social relationships. This game in particular is great for that: you need to communicate with one another to keep on top of what’s happening, and you all share in the fun together.