Blog 4: Bloggers of the Lost Blog

Aight kids so this week I'm supposed to talk about the game Flux and why I hate it. The game was centered pretty much entirely around the concept of ever-changing goals -- sometimes the goal of the game is to have three specific cards, sometimes it is... well I can't remember some of the other goals, but they weren't much more than just have cards X, Y, and Z in your hand and you win.

As far as the card drawing and dealing goes, I never fully grasped [or partially grasped for that matter] how that process is supposed to work, and the instructions were kind of long. A few minutes ago tho I found this picture that clears some stuff up.

The full list of rules is explained here. Probably the most interesting part of the game was when Anastasia said that we had to stop talking and could only communicate non-verbally, but that really had nothing to do with the game. This game reminded me of a less-frustrating version of a game called Mao.

Don't know how to play Mao? Well idiotically enough, that's the point: you go into the game without knowing how to play, drawing and playing cards, and being penalized for not performing a given action after playing a card. Oh and if you say "What? Why am I being penalized?" or "Why are you making me draw cards?" or "This is stupid get out of my house" then you have to pick up even MORE cards until eventually you call the cops and kick everyone out of your house in a drunken rage.

Also, the version we were playing was the Monty Python edition, with all of the cards referencing something to do with Monty Python and the Holy Grail [there may have been other Monty Python references in there but Holy Grail was the one that I recalled]. This is fine, but any game referencing that movie carries the risk of some idiot yelling "We are the knights who say NI!" which then carries the risk of me punching said idiot in their stupid face. This is because the knights who say ni are NOT FUNNY.

Seriously, they aren't! So STOP QUOTING THAT PART OF THE MOVIE!

I am also supposed to talk about what the designer attempted to do, and why it failed. However, I'm so sure he did...

It looks like the designer of this game [Andy Looney] was attempting to make a card game that require you to pay such close attention to the ever-changing rules that you forget that you're not having very much fun.

By and large I'd say that Mr. Looney succeeded since his game is somehow still popular after thirteen years. So congratulations Mr. Looney; you may have fooled a large number of people into thinking that your game is fun, but you haven't fooled me.