Players: 2-6
Playing Time: 10-40 minutes

The Components

Zombie Fluxx comes with 100 cards and a set of instructions.

The cards are all printed on medium-weight glossy stock. There are five types: keepers, goals, creepers (which are zombies), rules, and actions. They're printed full-color, but you can still see the original Fluxx's legacy as a two-color game. Card designs are simple and mostly two-tone, though the artwork on keepers and goals is full-color and attractive.

As with all the Fluxx games, Zombie Fluxx earns some notice for its good utility. Icons make it easy to quickly assess what rules cards do and what various other card effects are. Goals in particular are easy to use because they (mostly) depict everything you need to accomplish in bold graphics.

When I rate a game's Style, I inevitably include how well themed it is, and this is where Zombie Fluxx really stands out. Designer Andy Looney has done a great job of take his original Fluxx mechanics and adapting them to produce a well-themed zombie games. This particularly comes out in the keeper and goal cards, which feature fun zombie-movie elements. My favorite goals, both of which really show off the humorous and appropriate theming are "I Alone Survived" (where you win if you have a car, no friends, and no zombies, and everyone else does have zombies) and "I'll Hold Them Off" (where you win if you have a weapon and are the only player with zombies). Some of the players complained that the zombies in the game didn't feel threatening enough, but that's the only complaint you could possibly make about the theming.

Overall, Zombie Fluxx has good-quality components of average attractiveness with good utility and great theming. It thus earns a "4" out of "5" for Style: very nice.

The Gameplay

The object of Zombie Fluxx is to play keepers to accomplish the current goal.

Standard Play: A game of Zombie Fluxx starts with each player being dealt a hand of three cards. Then on his turn a player draws one card, then plays one card. There are five different types of cards that can be played:

Rules. These are cards that change the basic rules of the game. The simplest ones change how many cards you draw, how many cards you play, and your hand limit. There are also many zombie-related cards, which give you various ways to kill them or send them away, as well as a few other variant rules.

Actions. These cards let you do special things, such as stealing cards from other players, drawing cards and using them, etc.

Keepers. These are cards that you play and keep in front of you. They're things like The Shotgun, The Car, and Brains. Keepers are what you ultimately need to win the game.

<Creepers. These are a sort of anti-keeper, new to this version of Fluxx. They're all zombies, in sets of 1, 2, 3, or 4. When you draw a creeper you must immediately play it, then must draw to replace that card. Many of the zombies are hard to kill, because they move to other players or else return to the draw pile when "slain".

Goals. There's only one goal out at a time; when a new one is played, the old one is replaced. These goals describe a list of keepers and/or creepers that you must have out to win. For example, 'Shotgun!' requires you to have the shotgun and the car. Zombie Baseball team requires you to have the baseball bat and 9 zombies. Many other goals require you to either have or not have zombies in order to win. In Zombie Fluxx there's also one ungoal: if it gets played and there are too many zombies out, everyone loses.

Killing Zombies: Part of the fun of Zombie Fluxx is that you get to kill zombies. The shotgun always let you kill a zombie on your turn if you want. There are are also special rules and keepers which can let you kill more zomibes. Killing zombies is always an optional free action if you meet the criteria.

Winning the Game: A game of Zombie Fluxx goes until someone meets the goal currently face-up. This usually happens when they play it after meeting the criteria, but with the ever-varying rules, sometimes a player is forced to play a goal that lets someone else win.

(For more on the original Fluxx's rules, see my review of it, which includes some nice illustrations.)

Relationship to Other Games

Fluxx was a card game designed by Andrew Looney and originally published by I.C.E. in its waning days. After the original I.C.E.'s destruction the game came over to Andrew's own publishing house, Looney Lab, where it's since become a cornerstone of their business. The game has gone through multiple editions and multiple foreign translations, but still maintains its core ideas of playing keepers to accomplish goals.

More recently Looney Labs has started releasing variant Fluxx games, each of which adapts the keeper/goal/action/rule format to a new theme. These include Eco Fluxx, Family Fluxx, the out-of-print Stoner Fluxx, and the small expansion packs of Jewish Fluxx and Christian Fluxx.

Zombie Fluxx is the newest in the series. It's the most different from the other Fluxxes, with its brand new ideas of creepers and zombie-killing, but it's still entirely recognizable as Fluxx, and is moreso a very clever adaptation of the Fluxx mechanics for a new genre.

The Game Design

Fluxx is a light game. It's great for families and for casual play, but it's not a strategic gamer's game. With that said, it does a great job of appealing to that play style.

The core ideas of Fluxx (that you play keepers to accomplish goals and that you can change the rules) are both simple and interesting and they result in a game that keeps changing enough to keep it interesting. In fact, that's probably the best praise that one can give Fluxx: it's just plain fun--and funny; Andrew Looney has a good sense of humor.

This newest game, Zombie Fluxx, doesn't change any of that. The new game is light, fun, funny, and clever, just like its predecessors. In fact I find some of the humor even more notable than in the past, such as those zombie-movie style goals that I mentioned at the start of this review, though that might just be their novelty. Generally, as noted, Zombie Fluxx does a great job of adapting the Fluxx mechanics to the genre, allowing them to complement each other well.

I have one minor concern in Zombie Fluxx: it felt harder to accomplish goals than in older Fluxx games, but that could be just my unfamiliarity with the new set. Surely, it was still possible to set up a win and accomplish it ... if you played a little well and got a little lucky.

Generally, Zombie Fluxx is a fine new addition to the Fluxx family and a fine game of its own. If you're looking for a fun horror game for Halloween, it's a great game to get whether you've ever played Fluxx or not; I've given it a "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Zombie Fluxx mixed great zombie theming with Fluxx's ever-changing rule system to produce a light and funny card game that works well for casual play.

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