As a fan of all things dexterity games, I’m always up for trying the newest crazy concept to arrive at Board Game Grow HQ. From flicking games like Ice Cool to stacking games like Rhino Hero, I love the uniqueness that dexterity games bring.
And unique can definitely be applied to the game we are looking at today. Ixi Kix, published by Luke Lab, is a flicking game(ish) where you are trying to get comma-shaped pieces into a hole in the box. Say what now?
Gameplay Overview:
Learning how to play Ixi Kix is fairly easy. Each player has a handful of these comma-shaped plastic pieces. On your turn, you hold it on the table with one finger (either upside down, or thick side up), and press down. The goal is to try and get it to fly into one of the two holes in the box, which will score you points. And that’s about it, you play until someone gets enough points to win.
Game Experience:
Ixi Kix bills itself as an easy-to-learn, hard-to-master type of game. And while that’s technically true, it’s also hard to play. When we first sat down to play Ixi Kix, we kind of sucked at it. Well not kind of, we really did. Out of 10 shots, we were lucky to get 1 to land in the box. For some reason, getting these pieces to do what you want was insanely hard.
The other issue is that I found the choice of table surface greatly impacted our ability to play the game. We first tried on a standard table with a neoprene pad. No go. The pieces just wouldn’t fly. So we experimented on a granite countertop, wooden table, plastic, a variety of surfaces really. We found the wooden table to be the best of the surfaces we tried. It had about the right amount of grip and slip.
But as much fun as the game looked on the outside, no one really enjoyed it. My gaming group was more frustrated than anything playing the game and had no desire to finish it. I tried it with my 6-year olds, and while they had more fun, they also got frustrated quickly; they had too hard of a time getting the pieces to score. Finally, I took it to a gathering with my family and no one seemed to enjoy it there either. People would flick a few pieces and then quickly lose interest. In general, Ixi Kix just seemed to be a huge miss with everyone I tried it with.
Final Thoughts:
While the videos of people doing trick shots with Ixi Kix looked like a blast, that wasn’t our experience. For the most part, the pieces would randomly fly off in whatever direction they felt like, or they’d slip on the table when you tried to flick them. So either we are all just really bad at the game (definitely possible) or you just need loads of practice to have any real chance at scoring in the game. In either case, as no one had any fun with this one; it’s not going to be hanging around our gaming table much longer.
Final Score: 2 Stars – Flicking it away into the giveaway pile.
Hits:
• Unique concept
• Easy to learn rules
Misses:
• Pieces are very hard to flick
• Table surface greatly affects gameplay
• Super hard to score points
