FixFox is an ambitious indie that tries to balance a lot of ideas at once. Made by a one-person development studio, it’s a top-down sci-fi puzzle adventure with more mechanical variety than you would expect. It’s in the execution of some of these mechanics that the game stumbles at points, but its many successful ideas along with a fantastically written, character-focused narrative, make it well worth your time.

FixFox is set in a futuristic world in which all humans have evolved into half-animals in order to survive climate change. You play a fox-person named Vix, whose pronouns are she/her by default but can be changed in the settings. Vix is a mechanic who, along with her AI best friend Tin, find themselves crash landing on the planet Karamel. They have no idea where to find the job they came here for, nor do they know how to get back home to Earth. 

The first major mechanic you’re introduced to is repairing broken machines. You open up their innards and see what needs fixing, but you need equipment to do so. Vix loses her tools early on, so you need to rely on bits and pieces you find around the world. For example, the game tells you that unscrewing a bolt requires a tool with the “flat” property, so you could use a coin or a spatula to get the job done. A coin could also function as a metal conductor to fix another type of machine part. There are dozens of tools in the game, each serving to fix different kinds of problems. 

Some NPCs give you comfort food, leading to a screen where you click to eat as they tell you a secret, usually of a hidden stash or pathway. This wholesome mechanic is used sparingly throughout the story, and beautifully lets you connect with NPCs while learning more about this fascinating world. I was less interested in the game setting limits for how often I could pick up stashes or repair machines per in-game day, lest I have my tools taken from me by one of Karamel’s warring factions. These limits can be easily reset by finding a radio or going to sleep for the night, and they seem to exist purely to remind you that these factions exist at all.

About a third of the way through the game, you are tasked with building your first Jumbot. These gigantic robots are manually piloted by you, and are used to solve environmental puzzles. They’re a cool concept, but the game makes it unnecessarily obtuse to figure out how they initially work. The first time I acquired one, the game repeatedly told me that I needed it to clear an obstructed door, but I couldn’t find anything on the door – or nearby – for the machine to actually interact with. I thought I’d hit a bug, or needed to find something else to clear it first. After (bit ashamed to admit this) hours of running around, I discovered that the solution was to approach an unmarked spot on the wall around the corner from the door to reveal a small mechanism for the Jumbot to attach to.