I wrote a review of Fluxx. Finnish readers can go and read it.

Fluxx is a very simple game to teach. The rules are “Draw one card from the deck, play one card from your hand”. That’s it. No victory conditions or anything useless like that.

The point is that almost every card changes the rules in some way. Players draw more cards, play more cards, have a hand size limit, whatever. Cards also introduce victory conditions, called Goals. Goals usually require a certain combination of Keepers, cards which are kept in front of the player. For example, there’s a goal of making toast. Thus, the player with Toaster and a Toast wins. Or the mind’s eye — the player, who was The Brain and The Eye wins.

That’s all very simple. It’s also very chaotic. Players have no control over it. There’s no way to do any long-term strategic planning or even a short-term tactical planning. You just play whatever you can and try not to play Goals your opponents can fill. Games can take anything from two minutes to two hours.

Some people hate the game. It has one of the highest standard deviations in the BoardGameGeek database. That’s no surprise. People who take games lightly like it, those who are more serious about their games hate it. Fluxx certainly requires a good crowd. I wouldn’t play it with anybody. With good opponents, it’s a fun pastime — there’s really little matter who wins the game.

But it’s not a good game. I tend to dislike games that are more pastimes than games (for example The Great Dalmuti, I’m not the only one who prefers Tichu, which is similar except that it’s an actual game), so there Fluxx scores negative points. However, even though I wouldn’t suggest it, I’ll certainly play a game of it with the right people and I’ll even have fun while doing it.