Pair A Dice Games Corner

The Fox Experiment

When Dominion came out in 2008, it was a hit. It took deck building, which is the normal pre-setup for a lot of games (like MTG), and made that the game. Many games came after it and were “deck builders”, in effect, copying what they had done — but soon also games were becoming part-deck builder, part something else; or a game which had deck building elements, but would not be itself considered a deck builder.

There’s a point with many games starting as novelty and unique, but where their mechanics grow up and become part of the greater game soup. It becomes a giant whose shoulders other designers stand on.

I think that is what is happening in The Fox Experiment.

A science game about an experiment in Russia trying to breed foxes in 1958, also arguably the follow-up to the blockbuster game, Wingspan, by designer Elizabeth Hargrave, Fox Experiment could be called a Roll & Write Game. It could. But I think that misses the unique thing it’s trying to do.
In another sense, Fox Experiment is a drafting, dice game where you build the game components using roll and write mechanics.
At the beginning of the game, you draft male and female fox cards, plus the position you’ll be in in the next draft.
The foxes start as generic foxes, and their cards tell you what dice you will roll. Then you breed a new fox by rolling the dice and marking the results onto a blank, writeable fox car. In essence, you’ve created a new, custom game piece — with the goal of making a friendlier and friendlier domesticated group of foxes.

Then you return the new fox you’ve created to the kennel to be drafted in the next round to make the next generation. So even though you bred the fox pup, someone else may draft it in the next round.
There is a bit more to it, you can use Science cards to manipulate the dice values, you can upgrade your Laboratory to improve the dice, and you score points by improving your Lab or impressing Patrons, but the means of doing so is to increase the friendliness ratings in your fox pups with consecutive generations.
I really enjoyed this game because it manages to scratch the kind of simple decisions you would get in a roll-and-write style game, with the more medium-crunchy decisions of a normal middle-weight euro. Even the draft portion feels strategic but less fraught with overthinking because you’re drafting three different things — so maybe there are more, better male foxes, so I use my earlier draft to draft better draft position next time, or female fox — rather than drafting like-kind and having to pine over a game of millimeters.

I bet if I had to go back and re-read all my articles for the past year, at least 60% of them would be Roll & Writes, but again, I think what’s best about this is seeing the idea of a roll and write being broken down to its constituent parts and made into something wholly different and unique.