The game starts pretty innocuously. There are five of us, each with a hand of three cards. There’s a draw pile in the middle, and the rules are simple. Draw a card, then play a card. With the first draw, we begin act one of our tale.
There’s not a lot of difficulty to playing Fluxx. It’s got one main rule: that the rules change depending on the cards at play. The goal of the game is also changed by the cards played. Each player takes a turn laying down cards, changing the game, changing the rules, and as we continue into act 2, things begin to heat up. Cards are exchanging hands, people get ever closer to completing the goal, only to have it ripped away as the goal changes, and still nobody knows when the game will end.
Act three comes almost before anyone even knows it. The end of the game, as eloquently put by Professor Ames, is only really visible to the one who sees victory in sight. At the end of our game, the goal was to get two of three different cards in play. One of those cards was slowly being rotated around the table, and I had the other in my hand. As the turn passed to me, I set the rule that would allow me to win, then played the card that would give me the victory, and after multiple rule changes like draw 4 cards or play 3, the game finally ended.
Star Fluxx is an interesting game where the rules are defined by the players, but even this game can be divided into a beginning, middle, and end, it’s just difficult to see where you are until it’s too late.