Age: 8+
Players: 2-6
Playing Time: 5-30 minutes
Category: Card
Gameschool Area: Science
Price: $14
Publisher: Looney Labs
Card games are my favorite kind – they’re short, easy to learn, and there are so many great ones!
I have been hearing about Fluxx from friends and in Facebook groups for a while now, and there are so many different versions! They all look amazing, but we started with Anatomy to go along with a Human Body science unit.
It was a fantastic and fun way to identify organs and learn what they all do in the body.
The game rules are simple. On a player’s turn, he draws 2 cards and plays 2 cards.
Except that some of the cards are New Rule cards and if you play a New Rule card, you have a New Rule to follow! New rules might be “Draw 5 cards on your turn” or “Play every card in your hand every turn except 1.”
The rules are constantly changing as players play new cards. Some new rules replace others, some are played in addition to existing rules. The game changes every turn and it’s so so crazy and fun!
Goal cards can be played on a turn and they are what determine the conditions for winning the game.
Keeper Cards are also collected and played, and a Goal consists of typically 2 Keeper cards. The player to have the 2 keeper cards laid down when the corresponding Goal card is played wins! But new Goal cards cards are also being continually played, so the conditions for winning are constantly changing!
There are Action cards that either punish or reward certain players and Bacteria cards that attach to Keeper cards and prevent that player from winning.
At the bottom of the keeper cards are clues. Every time Keeper Cards are played, the clue at the bottom of the card is read and the first player to correctly guess the Organ that the clue describes gets to draw a card. This is where this game becomes super educational. My kids were reading our human body reference book and the Keeper Card clues to learn as much as they could to help them win this game!
These three games have been getting played daily lately. They’re all fantastic, and in my book, the more games the better! Use what you have, buy some new ones (games are fantastic and inexpensive gifts!), and play, play, play!
These are all the available Fluxx versions to date, and I can’t wait to try out a few more. The general play structure is the same, but the themes are obviously different and the cards are different – different rules, clues, goals, actions, etc. We’re going to be working on building our Fluxx collection over the next school year as there are many superb educational themes! Math is high on my list as is Astronomy, Chemistry, and Nature.
Fluxx is a great family game, Gameschool game, or party game. Pick a version and try it out, we think you’ll love it!
{Thanks to Looney Labs for sharing this game with us!}
