Hey, would you look at that? It’s been over a year since I last wrote about a Fluxx variation (Jumanji Fluxx, December 2019). I guess we’re due for another one!
Our newest rediscovery in that vast, mythical land known as “the game closet” is Eco Fluxx. From Keepers like Birds and Flowers to Actions like Extinction and Pollution, this deck is, like the others, a fun and quirky reimagining of the original Fluxx concept. It’s more than re-themed cards, however, as like every version of Fluxx it has some unique mechanics of its own.
The first big difference is the Creepers. In any game of Fluxx, you can’t win if you have a Creeper in front of you (unless the current Goal says otherwise). In Eco Fluxx, though, there are 3 Creepers, and while they’re in play, nobody can win. Furthermore, 2 of them have a second, more active negative effect — Forest Fire will force you to discard one of your Keepers every turn you start with it in play, until you no longer have any (at which point the fire goes out and gets discarded). If you have Flood instead (or, ow, at the same time), then at the end of your turn you have to discard your hand and give Flood to the next player, until either someone intervenes (plays a card that allows you to discard a Creeper) or it’s gone through every player in the game.
The other feature that stands out as specific to Eco Fluxx is a particular subset of Goals that I’ve been referring to as the “[x] eats [y] Goals,” like “Snakes Eat Mice,” “Mice Eat Seeds,” and “Rabbits Eat Leaves.” The key difference here is that where most Goals say “if you have [x] and [y] in play, you win” and some Goals say “if you have [x] in play and nobody has [y], you win” (ex: the “Ferns” Goal requires Leaves and no Flowers), “[x] eats [y]” Goals say that you win if you have [x] in play and anybody has [y]. For instance, in the picture below, I won with the Goal “Bats Eat Insects” by having Bats in play, because even though I didn’t have Insects, Mom did.
Along with this new style of Goal are a couple ways to combat it — the first is Poison, a Keeper that protects your other Keepers from being eaten. The second is a New Rule called Camouflage — you can “hide” one of your Keepers by either playing it face down or flipping it over if it’s already on the table. You can only have one hidden at a time, but while it is, the card is treated as if it isn’t in play, meaning things like “[x] eats [y]” Goals, Forest Fire, and Keeper Limits don’t affect it. You can reveal your hidden cards at any time, but you can only hide them on your turn.
Unsurprisingly, I love this version of Fluxx at least as much as I love the others, and I hope you will too!
Some of you may recall that I wrote about a game called Just Desserts a couple years back. For those of you who don’t, I’d advise you read that post here before continuing with this one. Why? Because today I’m talking about the expansions!
Just Desserts currently has two expansions: Just Coffee, and Better With Bacon. Yeah, I know, ew. Believe me, Mom and I spent plenty of time making faces at cards like Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes and Maple Bacon Donut.
The expansions don’t change the mechanics of the game; what they do is add two new ingredients (coffee and bacon), and two new families, bringing the count up to 9. Each has 4 customers, and six new desserts. For each expansion pack, there’s one dessert that doesn’t have the expansion’s special ingredient in it, and a customer who’s favorite is that one dessert. Which makes sense — none of the other families have one ingredient entirely in common, after all.
The one thing I think is really different with the expansions is that they each have a character who has their favorite listed as “Anything With Bacon” or “Anything With Coffee,” which allows players a way to use a single-ingredient card on its own (not possible with any other customers) or to use something with extra ingredients and still get the tip for a favorite.
For some extra fun and opinionated commentary (because seriously, why do people put bacon in desserts) I’d suggest getting the expansions (Just Coffee, Better With Bacon) to add to your base deck, or buying them all together at the Looney Labs online store. It’s worth it!
A couple weeks ago my best friend introduced me to Among Us. Yes, the game that it seems everyone is suddenly talking about. It’s got fan-made songs, animations, fanfic… but some of you are probably asking, “What actually is Among Us?” Allow me to explain.
Have you ever played Mafia? Or Are You A Werewolf? Among Us is like the digital, slightly more complicated sci-fi version of those. In those games you have the “night,” when the killers (be they mafia or werewolves) choose a victim, and then the “day” where you find out which one person has died, and vote someone out. Either the citizens vote out the killers and win, or the killers murder enough citizens that they can’t be voted out by majority, thereby winning.
Caption: Role: Crewmate
In Among Us the crewmates have another goal: complete your tasks. Each crewmate is given a random selection of assignments, like fixing wiring, downloading and uploading data, and entering their ID. Some of these, like the ones I just listed, can be found in any game of Among Us; some are specific to certain of the three maps. For instance, “Align Engine Output” wouldn’t be useful on Polus, which is a planet’s surface, but since the Skeld is a spaceship it makes sense. Neither of those maps have a greenhouse, but the airship by the name of Mira HQ does, so “Water Plants” is a perfectly reasonable task. A small handful of these are also “visual tasks,” meaning other players can see them, which, since imposters can’t do tasks, proves your innocence. Submitting a Medscan is the most well-known of these, but there’s a handful of others as well. Whatever your tasks are, if all the crewmates finish theirs they win the game. This simultaneously gives the imposters pressure to kill quickly and the crewmates an alternate objective, rather than solely focusing on the murder aspect of gameplay.
Caption: Medscan on Mira HQ
Though, admittedly, the murder aspect is important too. The imposters’ job is to kill all the crewmates (or, rather, enough that there’s the same amount of crewmates as imposters, just like in Mafia and Are You A Werewolf). They have a couple of tools to help them achieve this: a partner, depending on server settings (there can be 1-3 imposters in a max of 10 players), vents that allow them to move unseen between certain rooms, and sabotage. With this last functionality they can close doors to slow down their targets (on the Skeld and Polus, at least), sabotage communications, temporarily making the list of tasks inaccessible, turn off the lights (narrowing all the crewmates’ range of view), and cause a reactor overload or (on the Skeld and Mira HQ) an oxygen depletion, either of which left unchecked for long enough will automatically result in a victory for the imposters. Each of these has a different means of reversing them, but whatever the case they help to slow down the task progress and sometimes draw people away from a fresh corpse.
Caption: O2 depletion drew everyone else to the far side of the Skeld, enabling an easy kill.
That’s important because, unlike Mafia and Are You A Werewolf, it’s not a matter of one voting session per death. Rather, a meeting is only called when someone comes across and reports a dead body, or presses the Emergency Meeting button that’s in the Cafeteria on the two ships and in the Office on Polus. This button is primarily useful for when you saw someone going into/coming out of the vents, witnessed a murder on the security cams, or watched someone’s vital signs terminate (each map has multiple means of monitoring; the Skeld has security cameras and Admin, which gives a headcount for each room; Mira HQ has Admin and a Sensor Log for each of three sensors you can pass in the hall; and Polus has security cams, Admin and a vitals monitor). As an interesting aside, crewmate’s ghosts can still complete their tasks to contribute to victory, and imposter’s ghosts can still sabotage. This is a compelling reason to stick around even after being voted out or murdered.
Caption: The yellow highlighting the computer indicates that it’s one of my tasks; the computer next to it is the vitals monitor.
How many kills the imposters can manage without anyone noticing depends largely on location and how strategically they’re playing, but unless they’ve won, a body is eventually found and a meeting called. Then, of course, there’s the accusing phase. I won’t get into the strategies for that here, at least not this week (I don’t think I’ve ever done a follow-up on a game before but if y’all want one or I feel like it I may), just the process.
Caption: Getting my neck snapped in the Laboratory on Polus
I don’t recall ever playing a game of Mafia or Are You A Werewolf with a time limit on voting, but each Among Us server has a set discussion time before voting opens, and a set time from there before voting closes (both set by the server host). As you can imagine, it’s a lot of back-and-forth pointing of fingers and “Where was the body? Any sus [suspects] nearby? Where was everyone else?” It’s also a race to get your argument in before people vote, since voting doesn’t happen all at once in Among Us; rather, you can submit your vote anytime after voting opens, and when the time is up or everyone has voted all the votes are revealed.
Caption: As the imposter, I can see who the other imposters are (indicated by red name). The megaphone next to Red/M2lk indicates they called the meeting.
Once voting for a meeting has closed, there are a few things that can happen. If there’s a tie, nobody gets ejected. If skipping vote gets the most votes (yes, “skip” is an option, but no, not voting at all does not count as a vote to skip), then nobody gets ejected. If, however, any one player gets the most votes, they will be joining the ghosts. How depends on which map they’re playing: since the Skeld is a spaceship, ejections there occur by flinging them into the vacuum of space via airlock. Whoever’s voted out on Mira HQ goes skydiving without a parachute, and on Polus they take a quick stroll into a lava crater. Whether you get to see if they were an imposter or not at the point of ejection depends on the settings set by the host.
Caption: This isn’t an actual ejection screen, but it’s the lava crater.
If it’s not clear by how long this post is, I enjoy this game immensely. I think it’s a brilliant, engaging twist on a concept I was already fond of. I highly recommend trying it, whether for free on mobile, for a small fee on PC, or, like I’m playing, on PC for free through an app player called BlueStacks that enables Android applications to run on PC (for info on how to get Among Us that way, click here).
No, not the eating utensil. Chopsticks is a simple yet entertaining game I learned in elementary school to pass time while waiting in line. It’s convenient, as it doesn’t require much equipment — just two hands (at least four fingers each) and basic arithmetic.
I’ve usually played this as a two-player game, but you can really have as many people as you like, so long as you can fit them all facing each other (directly across for two, circle-ish for anything more) in whatever space you’re playing in.
Each player starts with both hands out in front of them, one finger on each raised. From there, whoever is going first will choose someone (anyone) and tap one of their hands with one of their own. The tapped hand raises a second finger, and play continues either clockwise or counter-clockwise (because it honestly doesn’t matter so long as it’s agreed upon).
It’s not always one that’s added to the hand. The principle of the game is that however many fingers are raised on the hand that taps, that’s the number added to the hand that’s tapped. Once a hand gets to five, that hand is fisted, put behind your back, or otherwise indicated as “dead.” If both your hands are dead, you’re out of the game.
Instead of tapping someone else’s hand, you can choose to tap your own together. This is an action of rearranging chopsticks; for instance, if you have four fingers raised on one hand and one on the other, you might adjust it to three and two. You’ll end up with the same amount of fingers raised, just redistributed, usually to lower the chance of a high-numbered one getting out. The rules vary by group (make sure you confirm them ahead of time!) so in some versions it’s acceptable to redistribute chopsticks to a dead hand, bringing it back into play, and in others once the hand is out, it stays out. It is not, however, a legal move to flip the values of your hands. (Think 2 and 3 to 3 and 2; nothing has actually changed, which prevents the game from properly progressing.)
The winner is, of course, the last person with at least one hand left in the game.
Plenty of people play Sudoku. With its grids for numerals, one of each number per row/column, but also per square, and the many varying difficulties the initial number line-up can provide, the puzzle game is portable, convenient, and engaging. However, I don’t often play it anymore.
This story starts in an airport in Hawaii, with a bored kid and an equally bored mother waiting for a flight. Though I don’t remember the details, I do know that Mom found a book of Hawaiian Sudoku to trade off while we waited, and that when I rediscovered it about a year ago, I addicted to it all over again. Which, I mean, as far as compulsions go, playing number games while listening to my History teacher really wasn’t that bad.
So what is Hawaiian Sudoku? Well, rather than grids, it’s a map of overlapping circles laid out in an image (hibiscus, poi pounders, volcanoes, etc.). Each circle operates like the rows and columns in the original game — there can only be one of each number, 1-6, in each circle. Furthermore, the same rule applies to diagonals — straight lines cut across the image — and parts of the edges, with shading and dots indicating which segments start and end where.
Here lies the problem — I no longer know what to do with a standard Sudoku puzzle. It should be easy, right? It used to be. But now, I’m so used to circular Sudoku, with its fluid, almost hypnotic cascade effect, the grids I grew up with seem foreign, uncompromising, and almost disturbingly blank in their formatting.
So, anyhow, that’s the story of why I have to relearn traditional Sudoku, and hopefully (if I didn’t scare you off with that bit) a recommendation for you to check out the Hawaiian version! Like I said, it’s addictive, but it’s also worth it, at least I think so.
Ah, yes, furious ramen. Or, well, ramen with chili peppers in it. But, like anger, that’s only a bad thing sometimes! Let me explain. Ramen Fury is a surprisingly backstabbing-intensive game of ingredient collecting and meal preparation.
Very basically, each player has three bowls, and each bowl of ramen can have up to five Ingredients (noodles excluded). To be eaten, there has to be a Flavor and at least one additional Ingredient. Flavor determines scoring. For instance, Beef Flavor scores for unique Protein Ingredients, whereas Shrimp Flavor bowls are worth four points per pair of Protein and Vegetable ingredients. There are also special Ingredients: Nori Garnishes and Chili Peppers. These can be played at any time (as a free action) into anyone’s bowl. Nori is a plus one, while Chilis are a minus one. That is, unless they’re in a bowl with Fury Flavor, which scores two points per pepper, and is where Ramen Fury gets the “Fury” part of its name.
You get two actions per turn. There are six of them: Prep, where you place an Ingredient in one of your bowls; Draw, where you take either a face-up card from the Pantry or the top card from the Ingredient Deck; Spoon, a twice per game action where you remove the top Ingredient from any bowl (including your opponents’); Restock, where you replace all four Pantry cards; Eat, where you finish a bowl of ramen, making it untouchable; and Empty, which you perform on your bowl of choice and is largely self-explanatory.
The final round is initiated either when any player has eaten their third bowl of ramen or when the Ingredient Deck is empty. Scoring is directly correlated to ingredients and handily mapped out on the Flavor/special Ingredient cards, making it quick and easy to calculate.
So, sit back, make some ramen, and appreciate the strategic Protein/Vegetable duality advantage of tofu!
Yep, another Fluxx. Specifically, the Fluxx that ended up in my Christmas stocking this year. (As well as a Doctor Who Fluxx 13th Doctor expansion pack, but that’s sidelining…) Don’t worry, there’ll be no spoilers here for the Jumanji films; I haven’t even seen the new one yet. More importantly, I’m not actually focusing on the plot, because, well… this is Fluxx. Plot? What plot? We make our own plots here, thank you very much.
Anyways, I’m not really here to talk about Fluxx, or the new Keepers and Goals for this version of it, as I am to talk about what’s new and different about the game mechanics in this version. I mean, sure, there are some interesting new cards — I definitely don’t recall having seen “Let’s Keep Doing That” as a New Rule before — but that’s not really big news.
The really big news is that there are Danger cards — cards with a yellow and black border that allow players to be “eliminated.” Elimination is both more and less drastic than it sounds — you lose all your cards, both your Keepers and the ones in hand, but after everyone else has taken a turn, you draw a hand of three cards and play from there. So you’re not out, you’re just kind of… starting over. The conditions for these danger cards are usually based around Keepers, like saying, “If a player has Albino Rhinos in front of them, that player is eliminated.” I may or may not have used a whole slew of Danger cards on Mom. What can I say? I grew up on Munchkin.
There are also optional Meta Rules, which we didn’t play with this time around, but as I understand it there are two of them. The first, if used, gets placed next to the Basic Rules in the middle, and indicates that you must shout “Jumanji” when you win the game. The second, “No More Lives,” gets placed at the bottom of the deck, and once it comes up it, elimination is permanent.
I should also probably mention that, like “The Doctor” and “Companions” in Doctor Who Fluxx, Jumanji Fluxx has certain cards marked as “Adventurers” and “Animals,” which for certain card mechanics are interchangeable amongst themselves.
Yep, another .io game. What can I say? They’re addictive. (See my post on Narwhale here.) I’m not entirely sure what to call this one; when I was introduced to it we all called it Slitherio, with various pronunciations thereof, but for the sake of consistency I’ll just call it Slither.
Slither is a slightly less obvious name than Narwhale, but only just so. You are, likely unsurprisingly, snakes. In Slither, the goal isn’t so much to kill as it is to grow, and killing happens to be a convenient way to achieve that goal. To grow, you “eat” glowing dots, by which I mean the snake follows your mouse cursor and if it runs over a dot the dot disappears and your snake gets longer.
You can loop back over yourself just fine, allowing maneuverability accurate to snakes, but if you run into someone else, you die. When a snake dies, they fade into a large pile of super bright glowing dots, which are worth more than the random ones lying around. This is why a lot of players (not including myself) go on the offensive: killing other snakes is the fastest way to grow. Of course, it’s also dangerous, because there is the possibility that while trying to get them to run into you, you ram into them. That’s how I usually get kills; some overzealous little snake tries to corner me and self-destructs. And, I mean, you don’t just leave that perfectly good pile of points lying around, you know?
There is a trick that is, I’ve found, largely only useful to the offensive players, and that’s speeding up. When you left-click and hold, you go at an enhanced rate of speed, allowing you to dart in front of someone or, on the rare occasion I use it, to get out of a coil before it forms. A coil is a trick larger snakes use involving trapping a small snake entirely in a full circle and slowly closing the circle until the snake inside, who has no choice but to keep doing loops inside and will, if the maneuver is executed right, eventually have no room and run into the larger snake, at which point there’s a nice, concentrated pile of super-glowies (yes, I just made that up) that nobody else can get to. Anyhow, back to darting — darting has a price. When you do it, you leave a trail of small glowing dots behind you, which are subtracted from your body mass. Basically, if you’re going to use this move, make sure that what you’re darting for is worth more than the energy you lose to get there.
There are a couple of other things, like being able to choose your skin on the main screen, and the leaderboard in the top left corner, but those aren’t really important. I do suggest paying attention to the mini map in the bottom left corner if you’re having trouble finding enough stray glowing dots. It illustrates the map, where you are, and where the dots are concentrated, which is almost always the center.
One of the many games that I play online is called Narwhale. Aww! Sounds nice, kind of sweet, right? Haha, nope. Narwhale is a very simple game where you’re all — surprise! — narwhales, and you’re trying to kill each other by impalement, courtesy of tusks. A good example is this image, where I’m less than 1.5 seconds away from getting skewered by someone who’s about to make a sharp turn into my side.
“Why would you want to kill the other narwhales, though?” Well, that’s a good question. For starters, they’re all trying to kill you. You also get bonuses for each level you get (you advance the number of levels that each narwhale you kill has), like stamina (the little dots by your tusk, those are how many dashes you have left at a given time), stamina regeneration, dash speed, general speed, tusk length, turn rate… that sort of thing. You can see each upgrade for a moment as you get it, and then the words fade so that you can actually, you know, see what you’re doing.
Of course, bonuses that make it easier to kill shouldn’t really be the only reward to killing, should they? Of course not! It’s mostly for the rush of exhilaration when you get out of a tight spot, or see your username on the Leaderboard in the top right corner (if you don’t put one in, you’ll come up as “Lazy Narwhale”) or, if you do really well, get a crown for being the top player. Your tusk also turns into a kebab if you hit max tusk length, so that’s fun. Unfortunately, I don’t have any screenshots of my crown/kebab combo, since I was a bit busy trying not to die, but I do have one with just a crown.
It should also be noted that digital narwhales seem to be contortionists, and it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether they’re missing the back half of their body, therefore dying and no longer a threat, or whether they’re scrunched up, like the little greige-ish dude near the bottom of that last picture. Unfortunately, that’s an unavoidable result of high speed turning, so just know that it’s something to watch out for.
Yes, you read that right, and no, it isn’t a typo. Surviv is a third person shooter game, meaning you see your character from an overhead view. I’ve been told that it’s the 2-D version of Fortnight, but I can neither confirm nor deny that, seeing as I haven’t played Fortnight.
You destroy crates to get guns, ammo, grenades, melee weapons, outfits, medical supplies, and gear, which can also be found lying around sometimes. You may also find scopes, which increase your field of view. There are different types of ammo for the different types of guns (they’re color-coded), and different guns within each type. Everyone has their own preferences; I like the yellow-ammo weaponry because they tend to have large clips, and I’m not the most accurate shot.
Medical supplies are split into two groups, which I call “healing” and “adrenaline.” Healing supplies are bandages and med kits, which directly restore health. Adrenaline supplies are consumed, and then gradually give you health back until the adrenaline bar runs out. Gear is split into backpacks, helmets, and armor, each of which has three levels of possibility. Obviously, the higher the level, the better. Outfits are mostly useless, but there are a few that provide excellent camouflage.
The game has a “last one standing” premise to it. As the game progresses, the map gradually gets smaller as the “Red Zone” moves inwards. Standing in the Red Zone is possible, but your health decreases. You can see where the Red Zone will be moving to at any given time in the mini map, which is expandable if you hit “M.” How you survive is up to you – some people like to attack anything that comes near them until they’re the only one left, and some like to hide in bushes until they’re one of the last people left, and then they attack the remaining adversaries. It’s up to you!
You can also play “Squad,” either with random other players or with a group of friends. Let me tell you, it is an excellent experience to try and play this game with a group of teenagers in various, spread-out locations in the same room (*cough* passing period *cough*). It’s insane.
Squads are nice because you can communicate with your team to ask for certain supplies or ask them to go somewhere. You also don’t die immediately. Instead, you go to a slow and helpless crawl until one of your teammates revives you or you bleed out, which sounds awful, but it’s nice to get a second chance, and it rewards team members who stay with the rest of the squad by increasing their chances of revival.
It can take a little while to acclimate to the controls, but if you play enough it becomes automatic. Right click is communication/drop this item, left click is attack, , WASD are movement, 1-4 are selections of weapons (gun, gun, melee, grenade), F is to pick something up or open and close doors, and M is the map.
