Pandasaurus officially announced that The Fox Experiment is coming to Kickstarter on September 6th.
In The Fox Experiment, you’ll breed your own domesticated foxes. In each round, you'll select a pair of fox parents who have certain traits. You'll gain those specific trait dice, roll them, then try to move them around to make complete trait symbols which you'll then mark off on your pup card. You'll then gain trait tokens depending on how many traits you marked off, which you'll use to upgrade tracks on your personal player board.
At the end of the round, the previous generation of foxes will be cleared and all the new pups will be moved to the kennel, thus becoming candidates to be chosen as parents in the next round. The game ends after 5 rounds, and you'll gain points for pleasing patrons (end of game scoring bonuses), studies completed (personal player objectives), if you ever won the friendliest fox award, upgrades on your personal player board, and extra tokens. The player with the most points wins!
Based on The Russian Farm-Fox Experiment
In 1958, Demitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut started an experiment on domestication. From a large group of foxes, they selected the ones that reacted to humans with more curiosity and less aggression. In each generation, they selected only the friendliest pups to become parents, hoping to recreate the process that originally led to domestication thousands of years ago.
The experiment made stunning progress. Even though the foxes were chosen only for their friendliness, they soon started to get many of the physical traits that we associate with domesticated animals, like spots, floppy ears, and curly tails.
While this game was inspired by the Belyaev-Trut experiment in Novosibirsk, Siberia, it is fictionalized: Pandasaurus says they are not attempting to depict actual individuals or events. To learn more about the actual experiment, check out the book How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut.
Overview
The Fox Experiment is more than just a roll-and-write game. Every round, you draft a female and male fox to breed a pup from your personal deck. Each parent fox comes with certain traits that were emerging during the original experiment, like floppy ears and fluffy tails.
Take the corresponding trait dice (plus any "friendly" dice indicated on your player mat), roll them, then move them around and try to create "complete" trait icons. Then draw a pup card from your personal deck and fill those traits in! Afterwards, count up all spaces filled in and write the number in the indicated space -- this is your pup's friendliness score.
Depending on how many traits you filled in, you may earn trait tokens. You'll use these trait tokens to unlock upgrades on your player mat. These 4 different tracks will allow you to breed more pups, draw more study cards, gain more friendly dice (which are wild), and appease sponsors. As you upgrade further down a single track, you may unlock end of game points.
Studies are personal player objectives. If you made a pup that satisfies the trait conditions of a level of a study, place one of your player cubes on it to signify it's been completed.
- Sponsors are end of game scoring objectives
- Science cards provide special actions and bonuses
At the end of the round, the previous generation of foxes is cleared. All pups are moved to the kennel and the one with the highest friendliness score earns their owner points! As you may notice, all pups created in this round will become candidates for parent foxes in the next round.
Game info:
- 2-4 players
- Ages 10+
- 60 min playtime
- Designers: Elizabeth Hargrave & Jeff Fraser
- Illustrators: Marco Fornaciari, Mirko Cotti Piccinelli, & Joe Shawcross
- Mechanics: Card drafting, dice rolling, end game bonuses
- Crowdfunding on Kickstarter September 6-30
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