Players: 2-6
Playing Time: 5-30 minutes

Summary of the Components

Cthulhu Fluxx comes with a deck of 100 cards.

Quality: The cards are medium-weight and glossy. 4 out of 5.

Beauty: Many of Fluxx's cards, such as the rules and actions, are pretty plain. However the keepers and goals have full color art on them, and they're generally quite nice. 4 out of 5.

Usability: Fluxx has always done a good job of differentiating different sorts of cards by color; has made the effects of standard rules pretty easy to see; and has allowed you to easily link up keepers and goals. I found the goals somewhat harder to read in this game than in previous Fluxx's because of the increasingly detailed color art, but other than that, the game plays to Fluxx's usual strengths.

However, I also feel like this game makes more use of detailed rules for individual cards (particularly keepers) than any other version of Fluxx, and that unfortunately results in lots of text that is hard to read from across the table. This has some impact on the game, especially if you're unfamiliar with the set. 3 out of 5.

Theming: Cthulhu Fluxx does a superb job of carrying its Lovecraftian theming. It's filled with keepers that represent people and places from H.P. Lovecraft's stories and goals that combine them — often in funny ways. You also get plenty of GOOs and other scary stuff sneaking around as creepers. All of these Lovecraftian elements are used quite well, making this one of the most positively Mythos-esque games out there. 5 out of 5.

With terrific theming and good quality and beauty, Cthulhu Fluxx earns a "4" out of "5" for Style.

Summary of the Gameplay

Fluxx is a simple game. On your turn, you draw a card to your hand and you play a card. Among the cards you can play are keepers, which stay in front of you, and goals. Each goal tends to list a couple of keepers. If you have played the keepers shown on the current goal, you win.

However, it gets trickier from there: rules can be played which change how many cards you play and how many cards you draw — as well as other stuff within the game. Actions let you do clever stuff like swapping keepers and changing the goals. A couple of surprise cards even let you do cunning stuff out of turn.

As with other recent Fluxx games, Cthulhu Fluxx has bad cards too. Creepers are like keepers, except they stop you from winning (and may have other bad effects). Ungoals can cause everyone to lose the game.

In Cthulhu Fluxx all of these cards are very thematic. So the creepers tend to be Cthulhoid monsters, like Cthulhu, or scary stuff, like nightmares. Keepers are other things that you could find in Lovecraft's stories, like penguins, cats, professors, and poets. Goals like Herbert West: Reanimator and The Innsmouth Look and Ungoals likeThe Dunwich Horror tie everything together. Even the actions tend to be thematic, like Strange Aeons (which puts our a few special rules) and FBI raid (which removes certain creepers and keepers).

I said earlier that the rules text on the cards tended to be complex. That's because the theming of the game is also reflected in the relatively common special powers for keepers and creepers. Thus The Elder Sign can hide a creeper, Randolph Carter can remove Nightmares, etc.

A few other specific elements of Cthulhu Fluxx deserve some note:

Icons. Some cards are marked with doom icons, some with undoom icons, and some with investigator icons. These are all used to good effect to give even more variety to the rules, goals, and other cards.

Traitors. Finally, some of those ungoals actually offer an opportunity for one player to win if their conditions are met (and everyone else loses). This is a pretty cool game element for a Cthulhoid game.

As noted, the game goes until someone meets the conditions of the current goal, then they win.

Relationships to Other Games

Cthulhu Fluxx is not only a member of the ever-growing family of Cthulhoid games, but it's also one of the good ones.

It's additionally one of about a dozen different Fluxx games from Looney Labs. I've previously reviewed Fluxx, Martian Fluxx, and Zombie Fluxx. I generally think of Cthulhu Fluxx as being one of the Fluxx 2.0 games that kicked off with Zombie Fluxx and introduced the ideas of creepers and ungoals. It's also one of the more complex Fluxx games.

The Game Design

The Fluxx games should generally be understood to be light. They're chaotic and they're crazy; they play fast and furious (and funny). In other words: don't expect deep strategy.

That's not a problem, mind you. Fluxx is really good at doing what it does well. As keepers, actions, rules, and goals are played, you have to stay constantly atop an ever-changing game. Sometimes you're forced to do things that you don't want to, and that's part of the game too.

With that said, there's surely some strategy in Fluxx, as you try and put together sets of keepers and goals to be played just perfectly so that you win. If anything, Cthulhu Fluxx increases the strategy possible in the Fluxx family of games. That's because of those more complex cards that I've talked about a couple of times. Though they can have a negative impact on usability (as you try and read them from across the table) they definitely have a positive impact on strategy, as you can now try to set up clever combos with your existing cards.

As with most of the other Fluxx games, I've given this one a "4" out of "5" for Substance. It's good fun.

Conclusion

Cthulhu Fluxx does a superb job of adapting H.P. Lovecraft's writing to Fluxx game play. The result is fast and funny and will be well appreciated by folks who like the Cthulhu mythos.