FixFox is an odd little adventure that caught my eye recently. I say recently, but it was back in January when the release date was announced. You play as Spacr, Vix, a humanoid-fox hybrid in a far-flung future where all of humanity has become the land of the furries. Vix is on an adventure traveling through space fixing stuff, and is a spliced together fox-human, hence the name, FixFox. By adventure, I actually do mean some proper exploration and adventure without too many handrails holding you to a strict line of progression. You have a main goal of fixing a beacon.

As a calm, warm, and charming story, it is still rather straightforward and (like the gameplay) continually relaxing. Is it a masterful piece of storytelling? Well, no, as you are often caught between two main groups of pirates and authority figures, frequently referred to as “nerds.” In that, you paint an image based on assumptions of the person behind the story; 20-somethings. The gameplay is a grab bag of exploration tools and mechanics that do very little to stand out, and there is a presence of story over gameplay often. None of this is meant as an insult, it’s just a pattern among specific people: The human-animal hybrids and the presence of a food-focused “mini-game” feeding the image.

As you explore the lands of this intergalactic adventure, you stumble across reasonably interesting or charming characters. Finding in colonies of robots enough dialogue to fill in the world-building to make everything feel alive despite very little actually being the rose of life. There was one thing ahead of the release that left a disconnection between myself and a large portion of the story, a bug causing graphical options not to appear properly. Addressed in the day-1 patch, for a majority of the time I played, my selected pronoun for Vix was the game’s decision for resolution, which meant the eventual dyslexia font that helps someone like me wasn’t appearing.

I won’t hammer specifically on about it, but reading text that is both stylized and makes me not particularly love a character eventually compounds the issue. Your robot/backpack companion Tin is inherently distrustful of anything unknown, a particular joke used multiple times is killer space clowns or carnivorous plants. With everyone else that you speak to sparingly, I can handle some annoyances, but the expositing companion on the adventure makes something like that exhausting. Add on top of this minor irritation from Tin a font that is by default large 16-bit pixels, sometimes animating or flashing specific colors to highlight something. By default, it is not the friendliest thing to a dyslexic.

Gameplay-wise, there isn’t much to write home about, nor is there much to complain about. In a top-down open world, you’ll explore a desert, far-flung ship drifting in orbit, or otherwise via speeder bike. You can also use an Ellen Ripley-style Power Loader mech, or if you are boring, simply walk. A large portion of your exploration is with the aim of finding things to fix or tools used to fix radios, vacuums, etc. None of which is particularly difficult, the most challenging part is trying to stay calm as you have to discover what the use of a toothbrush might be used for from Mystic Meg. Which you have to do with every new tool.

Generally, as a sedentary gameplay loop, it all meshes well together. In an open world about exploration, it gives you something to do, though, I think everything is a little few and far between. Conversely, with the puzzles being as uncomplicated and clear to see the solution, the sparse nature of them doesn’t bog you down with busy work. Often the problem-solving is little more than situational drama, and once you’ve got the tool you need, concerns over solving the problem are gone. Ultimately they aren’t puzzles anymore, or at least ones you’ll be stumped by for more than the time it takes your brain to process what it is looking at.

Fundamentally, I didn’t hate my time playing FixFox, despite personal conflicts with some decisions that were made. In fact, I enjoyed it. However, despite finding FixFox to be the metaphorical warm-hug of a game and the definition of a comfort game, I don’t believe I’ll be thinking about it months from now. It is well-made and carefully crafted to pass on a feeling of friendship through characters. It is definitely enjoyable overall. FixFox might not blow you away, but I don’t see how you could come away hating to dispising it for what it is.

A PC copy of FixFox was provided by Joystick Ventures for the purposes of this review.

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FixFox

$14.99

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Dyslexic font that is helpful.
• Cozy little adventure.
• Interesting toys to play with, at least for a few minutes.
• A charming story of friendship.

Cons

• A grab-bag of gameplay features, not really doing anything with them.