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Fox Matters is a 1-5 player real-time co-op game about adorable foxes dealing with everyday problems. Race the clock, recruit Foxes, and match their symbols to deal with troubles piling up in the Fox Kingdom.
Game alternates between the non-stress Planning phase and the real-time Action phase.
To deal with incoming problems, complications, and Nightmares, players need to match symbols in proper colors to requirements on the cards.
The symbols come from:
Player’s Miniatures - just put your hero on the problem to contribute to solving it.
Action/Caring/Friendship Cards - dealt to each player at turns start.
Fox Cards - recruited during the game.
Cards cannot be played haphazardly though. Each card has a set of symbols it can be followed with. If a mistake is made the combination does not work, even if all required symbols are present. When cooperating in real-time and solving multiple problems, it is not hard to miss something.
—description from the designer
- Light-hearted tone
- Cute, real-looking cards
- Familiar webcomic characters and jokes
- Explicit planning time reduces stress in real-time cooperative play
- cooperation to solve problems and complete rounds
- Based on the Fox Matters webcomic; world features fox characters dealing with real everyday problems.
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action phase with time limit — Two-minute action phase to attempt to meet problem requirements.
- Asymmetric Player Powers — Each player has semi-asymmetric abilities of their fox character.
- Cooperative Game — Players work together to solve problems across rounds.
- cooperative play — Players work together to solve problems across rounds.
- Hand Management — Managing cards in hand to meet the symbols on problem cards.
- order fulfillment / symbol matching — Players match relief card symbols to problem card requirements and place relief cards accordingly.
- planning phase — First phase where players discuss plans without revealing their cards.
- resource / reward system — Cheese tokens earned by foxes on problem columns, used for various effects.
- risk / penalty tokens — Fee tokens accumulate if problems remain unsolved, potentially causing a loss.
- semi-asymmetric fox abilities — Each player has semi-asymmetric abilities of their fox character.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- fox matters is a game based on webcomic
- the game is light-hearted
- not stressful as you have time to part plan
- my favorite character is the fox wizard
- the cards they are quite real, it's uncanny and so cute
- fox matters is about to be launched on kickstarter so i'll put the link in the description when it is live
- the components feature in this video are prototype so rules and artwork are not final