Dixit Board Game

Dixit is a game with the simplest rules that anyone can play, but to play well requires a certain kind of thinking. Everyone gets a hand of picture cards and on your turn you choose a card, describe it with a sound, word, sentence, quotation etc. and place it face down. The other players must select a card from their hand that matches your description, again placing it face down. The selected cards are all shuffled. The other players then vote on which card they think was the original, but here's the clever part - If they all get it, or if none of them get it, you get no points and everyone else gets points. You have to make your description a little vague to include one or two other cards, but not so vague that it no longer really describes anything. If you manage this, you get points, those who found your card get points, and those whose card fooled other people get points. The player with most points wins when all the cards have been drawn.

The art on the cards is very pretty in itself, and each card is fairly enigmatic. The board is part of the box - you get little wooden rabbits to run around a field for keeping score.

This game is very different to those our group usually plays, being about creativity rather than logical strategy. It is a nice break for between e.g. Eurogames, but would work equally well as a family game. It actually gets harder the more you play it as you have to think up new words for the cards you've seen, as using the same description again is going to give it away. Eventually the cards become a little familiar, but there are expansions out there to solve this, and simply not playing for a week or two helps with that.

This was a fantastic find - an utterly addictive game that all my friends and family loved instantly and wanted to keep playing, and rushed out to buy. It can work on many levels - we played with young children and with adults, and the mechanisms work effectively for both. I've also played with different groups of adults - some where everyone knew each other extremely well, and some where there were strangers involved, some regular games players and others not - and it works each time. At first people tend to be cautious and go for "obvious" phrases, but they soon realise that doesn't work and they get creative. I've watched it being played where the players agreed to just use single words, and that also worked fine.
The cards are wonderful, and triggered lots of discussion during the game after they were played.
One thing we found was that it works far better with 6 players, as this means there are more cards to choose from and more chances of getting a vote for your card. Loved the wooden rabbit pieces, although the scoreboard is slightly awkward to use - we made our own to travel abroad with.
Although quite expensive, I think it is great value for money. Highly recommended.

Dreamlike, poetic, with a touch of the surreal... my children love this game. They are aged 7 and 4 and are always asking to play it. It reminds me a little bit of Djeco's "Blah blah blah" -another favourite- where you become a storyteller using a randomly drawn card in combination with a pick of your own hand of cards, or you choose which two may be linked by a common denominator, etc. But "Dixit" is even more about thinking outside the box and about letting your imagination be jump-started by abstract, evocative images and let's see what your unconscious mind regurgitates.

If you like precision in a game, clean-cut and neat ideas, maybe will be a bit exasperated by this game, because "Dixit" is about all that falls beyond those parameters.

There is also a possible danger area: as you're supposed to describe/reflect in any way that comes to your mind the picture on a card (using a sound, a song, a name, the title of a poem, a line from a poem, a riddle, a grimace, anything as long as it beats around the bush and is not literal), it easily triggered accusations such as "you made it too obvious" amongst kids. The very young will in fact find some degree of difficulty trying a more complex, lateral interpretation of images, therefore its 8+ age recommendation. But still worth playing with the younger children as they will be initiated into the art of the metaphor in all its forms (and they will have to make an effort thinking!).

It's also beautifully designed, with very high production values and illustrated in the style of European (mainly French) contemporary children's picture books illustrators. Actually, it does feel very European in concept and aesthetics. When someone dropped a cup of juice on our box it was quite upsetting that out of all the numerous games we have it was "Dixit"'s box the one that had got damaged as it is just like a box full of real or possible dreams that wants to be opened.

P.S. "Dixit 2" is also out full of more, new dreams...