How to play FIXER Card Game & Review

FIXER is a trick-taking, area-control game.

Title: FIXER

Year Published: 2024

Designer: Iida Takaaki

Publisher: JELLY JELLY GAMES

Players: 2-4

Game Time: ~15 mins

Set-Up Time: ~1 minute

Ages: 10+

Theme: A dark world where players are trying to become the ultimate shadow ruler.

Mechanisms: Trick-taking, area-control.

How to win: Gain the most points by winning cards and scoring critical victories.

Game Description

The regime controls the capital, the capital controls the media, the media controls the people, the people overthrow the regime…

How to play FIXER

Learn how to play FIXER in a quick and concise way!

Main Mechanisms

This is a pseudo-trick-taking game that plays mostly as area-majority. You play cards, following suit as possible but only two cards go into a ‘trick’ regardless of the player count.

USP

The USP is this gameplay. It’s trick-taking but it isn’t, it’s area-majority but it isn’t… it’s cool.

Theme

The theme of the 4 ‘suits’ is familiar but it looks to be set in a (slightly) more dystopian world than ours.

Setup & Rulebook

Setup is simple for all player counts even though the table is set up differently for 2, 3 and 4 players.

The rulebook is good, except it doesn’t explain the two-player game as well as the rest of it.

Components & Artwork

The cards are OK but the boards are good and the tokens are really nice and chunky.

I really like the dark, minimalist artwork.

Ease of Teaching

The game is easy to teach. There are fewer elements to teach than some trick-taking games.

Similar Games

Joraku is a true trick-taking area-control game so I would put that down here.

FIXER Review

Positives

Simple gameplay keeps the card play ticking along.

It’s much more tactical and more thought-provoking than you would think if you hadn’t played it. Scoring critical wins is great, but reduces the options of cards you can get back into your hand later on.

The art is nice as are the components for such a small game.

Negatives

The two-player rules in the rulebook needed expanding.

FIXER Round-Up

A very fun and unique game mechanism.

Rating

I give it 7/10