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MIT OpenCourseWare http://ocw.mit.edu CMS.608 / CMS.864 Game Design Spring 2008 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms.1 Fluxx: The Board Game Sharat Bhat, Charles Tam, Karena Tyan April 17, 2008 Concept Fluxx in its original form is a card game noted for being very easy to pick up and play, both in the se ns e that the rules are simple and presented unambiguously on the relevant c ards, and that the ga me is small, portable, and allows for a varying number of players even within a single iteration of the game. The card types include Rules, which determine the current “rules of play”; Actions, which have an effect when played and then are discarded; and Keepers and Goals, which determine the winner(s) of the game. The winning conditions are dictated on each Goal card and typically feature some combination of Keeper cards. The only meta-rules are that when a player enters the game, he draws three cards and adds himself to the circle of players (this applies bo th to starting the game and to adding a player in mid-game), that play occurs in a turn-based fashion proceeding around the circle of players, and that a player’s turn is co mposed of first Drawing, then Playing. Our adaptation of Fluxx as a board game aimed to preserve the fluid nature of the ga me as much as possible. The idiomatic “ Draw 1 Play 1” changed to “Draw 1 Place 1 Move 1.” The game now requires a board and tokens. Instead of P laying cards so that they immediately have effect, cards are Placed onto the board. Then, in order to activate an Action card, a token must land on or be moved over it. Similarly, a player is considered to be in posse ssion of a Keeper only when he has a token o n it. Note that this means that multiple players can be in possess ion of a Keep e r, or that a single player can own multiple instances of the same Keeper. If a Goal is met by multiple players, then all those players win. Our board game version of Fluxx differs from the original primarily thr ough the additional layer of strategy provided by the physical layout of the cards and the availability of Placed Action cards to any player. Whereas in the Fluxx card game, Action cards are Played by one player immediately from their hand, our board game version both delays the effects of Action cards and ma kes them available to all players within reach once Placed. Board game Fluxx also le aves you more vulnerable to retaliation or blocked movement if the “None Shall Pass” rule is in play. Players can decide the order they use their Place and Move options, allowing them some measure of immediate effect fr om Actions placed. Players will generally Place beneficial Actions in the path of their tokens. However, players can also hinder opponents by Moving first and Pla c ing offensive Actions in their trail to discourage pursuers. Furthermore, as players are forced to show their strategy by laying out Action cards on the board, opponents have the po tential to pre-empt those strategies, if the number of Moves available to the Placing player is less than the number of cards the playe r wishes to activate. In general, the board game version of Fluxx allows for spatial strategy and more interaction amongst players than the card version. Since our game was designed to give the exp e rience of playing Fluxx in a board game, most of the design centered around recreating the the aesthetic experience of the original Fluxx card game. We tried to create gameplay mechanics that fit in with the original game’s feeling of constant change. As a result we made the 12 board change as cards are plac e d onto it. The mechanics were largely created to match the aesthetics of the original game. The token limit was added to add an analogy to the Keeper limit and several other cards were added almost directly fro m the original Fluxx game. In order to add our own bit of personality to the game without compromising the feel of the car d game, we changed to Keepers and Goals to be more relevant to our lives. We later had to adjust the mechanics to balance the game and match the strategies in the original Fluxx game, but overall our goal was to create mechanics that created an environment that felt the same as the Fluxx card game. First Iteration DRAW 1 GOAL PLACE 1 MOVE 1 TOKEN LIMIT 1 Figure 1: The Central Nine “Seed” Squares. To keep with the general concept of Fluxx, we a llowed the shape and size of the board to change during play. At the beginning o f the game, the boar d consisted of only nine “s e e d” squares (Figur e 1). The board could be expanded by playing Actions and Keepers to locatio ns adjacent to existing tiles. To limit board growth, each player co uld only Pla c e Actions adjacent to his own tokens; consequentially, tokens could only move to parts of the board that had already been created by Placing and “blanking” cards. We also considered the possibility of destroying portions of the board. Action cards designed for this purpos e drew a distinction between era sing a tile, which removed the Keeper or Action residing in a location but left a blank tile there; and deleting a 23 tile, which removed the tile itself and any cards or tokens occupying that location. We were fo c used more on mechanics this game, so we played with the Keepers and Goals defined in normal Fluxx. We also used most of the Rules and Actions therein, but some of them had to be modified to fit with the idiom of the board game1 . For example, Keeper Limit c ards were changed to Token Limit cards, thus imposing a hard limit on the number of Keep e rs a player could possess, but in a different manner. We also added cards that allowed for token creation and deletion. Generally


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