More about those cute foxes

We recently talked about the unusual theme and mechanics of 🦊 The Fox Experiment and how it worked but wanted to share more thoughts on it. 🧐
Since the game was co-designed by Elizabeth Hargrave we got to the table with expectations of playing something similar in weight and style as Wingspan. 🕊️ While Wingspan does not hit the table often, we still think of it as a nice gateway level game which is easy to teach to new gamers. I’d say in regard to this aspect, we weren’t disappointed. The immense amount of components seems daunting and there is room for improvement for the rulebook, but once you have learned the game and played the first round, you’ll realize that the game is actually pretty intuitive and light weight, maybe even lighter than wingspan.

We had a good time playing it. It was definitely engaging to create and name your pups, then see them as parents in the next generation breeding the next waves of cute pups! 🙂

But there are some aspects you need to be aware of if you are debating whether the game is for you or not. As we mentioned in our last post, apart from the drafting phase where you select the male and female foxes and initiative order for the next round, the game is pretty solitary. 👉 The longest part is where everybody is simultaneously rolling dice and noting the traits on their pup cards.

While we are talking about rolling dice: 🎲 this inherently brings a luck factor to the table. You do have some agency, but luck plays a big role. Your main task is to maximize your results with the limited options of the ‘friendly’ (joker) dice and research 🔬 cards that you sometimes draw.

All in all we enjoyed playing The Fox Experiment, especially because of the cute pups and the joy of dice rolling, but after playing the game multiple times, subsequent games don’t feel that different and the replayability feels lacking. In 2p games there is a dummy player too, which is relatively easy to handle, but definitely a factor to consider when buying for 2p.
Based solely on the mechanics, I could imagine a pure simpler roll&write version with a smaller footprint, but I sure don’t mind the great tactility.😉