Players:2-6
Playing Time: 30-45 minutes
Difficulty: 1 (of 10)

The Components

The game comes with:

• 6 Player Mats
• 6 Chi Markers
• 99 Cards

Player Mats: These mats are each printed on medium-weight cardstock with rounded corners, black on beige. The mats are fairly simple: they contain a meter for Chi and spaces to place a Stance card and a Weapon card, all enclosed in some thematically appropriately bamboo borders.

Chi Markers: These are six red glass stones. They’re attractive, and actually work quite well as markers because you can see the chi number on the mat straight through the stone (as long as your light is good).

Cards: These cards, printed on medium weight cardstock with rounded corners, each include: a name, a card type, an illustration, and specific information.

The artwork is all black and white that’s been shaded with various computer gradients; it's displayed in front of a background of Oriental symbols. I found the overall effect thematic, though plain while I was glancing through the game, but when I had a handful of the cards, I thought they looked quite good.

The text on the cards is fairly small, which can be a problem for the Stances and Weapons, which are placed on the playing surface, and thus should be readable from across the table.

These cards also highlight what’s the true strength of the game: the trueness to the theme of Hong Kong Cinema Brawling. You have attacks such as "Punch" and "Kick", weapons such as "Staff", "Umbrella", and "Sword", and attack enhancements such as "Spinning", "Flipping", and "Invincible", and all of these cards can go together. ("I hit you with Fast Flipping Table!!") This theme continues to nicely present itself throughout the cards. (My favorite is probably the Chi Restoration card, "Dramatic Pose!", which is entirely evocative.)

Box: The game comes in a small rectangular box that's a good size for the game, but unfortunately doesn't have any tray for the cards, which will go all over.

On the whole, Kung Fu Fighting has fairly average components, given the cost, with some minor usability problems, but it really shines on theme, so I've given the game a low "4" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Kung Fu Fighting is to beat up the other players.

In the game. Not for real.

Setup: Each player is given a player mat and a chi marker. They put the chi marker on the "20" value for chi. They also take an initial hand of seven cards.

Order of Play: Each turn a player can:

1. Discard & Draw Cards
2. Play Cards

You can discard as many cards as you want, then draw up to a hand size of 7.

Play Cards: You now get to attack no more than once on your turn and/or play cards.

Playing Stances & Weapons. You can play stance and weapon cards to your player mat. If you already have one, you discard the old one. These cards remain on your player mat until discarded for some reason, and give you permanent benefits.

A weapon does a certain amount of damage, and sometimes provides a certain amount of defense.

A stance gives you bonuses against certain other stances and to certain types of attacks, and sometimes provides other benefits (e.g., a larger hand size for the Snake Stance).

Attacking. You can attack by either playing an attack card or else declaring an attack with your weapon (if you have one). You may also play attack enhancement cards, which have words like "Flying", or "Fast", and add bonus damage to an attack.

You must also declare your target, one of the other players.

Once you've played all your attack enhancement cards, the defender may then block, if he has a block card. Some blocks totally negate a specific type of attack (e.g., "Fist Block") while a few provide defense (e.g., "Balanced: +3 defense").

If an attack is blocked, the attack is over.

Otherwise, the attacker adds up his points of damage, and the defender adds up his points of defense (which only come from some rare weapons and stances and blocks), then the defender takes the difference in damage to his chi.

Damage can really add up and luck will play a very large part. An unlikely but possible first hand draw is a "Drunken Stance" combined with a "Wild, Spinning, Flipping, Split Attack Kick When Done Right, None Can Defend": 16 almost unblockable points of damage against two different opponents.

4-10 points of damage is more common a successful attack.

Playing Chi Restoration. The only other cards to play are chi restoration cards, which give one or three points of chi back to one or more players.

Winning the Game: You win the game when you're the last man standing.

The Game Design

The game plays smoothly and relatively quickly, but beyond that there's no much to it. It's almost entirely random, based on what cards you draw, and whether your opponents can block you or not, and there's almost no strategy.

The faint, faint bits of strategy revolve around: deciding which opponent to attack at any time; and deciding which cards to keep.

The one bit of game design that I thought stood out was your ability to discard any of your cards at the start of each hand, which helps you cycle quickly through less useful cards, and makes you feel like you have control over things (even though you really don't).

I don't have any real complaints about the game. I think it plays fine for what it is, which is a pretty mindless combat game. However, on the other hand, there's not a lot of meat to the game either, so I've given it a "2" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

King Fu Fighting is a well-themed, but very simple interplayer combat game. It plays smoothly, and it's fun enough if you're not looking to expend any brain power, but there's not a lot to the game beyond that.

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