Dixit
Every picture tells a story – but what story will your picture tell?
Dixit is the lovingly illustrated game of creative guesswork, where your imagination unlocks the tale. In this award-winning board game, players will use the beautiful imagery on their cards to bluff their opponents and guess which image matches the story. Guessing right is only half the battle – to really succeed, you’ll have to get your friends to decide that your card tells the story!
Every turn, the storyteller will call out a short phrase or word to match the image on his card. Then each player will choose the card that most closely matches that phrase, and then everyone must guess which card the storyteller saw when he invented his brief tale. Correctly guess the storyteller’s card, and you’ll move ahead. Convince everyone else that your card is best, and you’ll do even better.
Dixit is a wonderfully simple game, playable by nearly anyone with whom you share a common language. With a fantastic range of beautiful illustrations and rules that can be understood by children and adults alike, Dixit will appeal to anyone with an imagination. It’s no surprise that Dixit won the Spiel de Jahres award for game design in 2010. It is brilliant and simple, beautiful and imaginative, and fun for all.
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Dixit is a party game that emphasizes creativity and storytelling over humor and satire. This is a great game for those that feel burnt out on the modern “judge and winner” party game design.
Players have a hand full of oversized cards with beautifully drawn artwork. The art ranges from realistic (a couple playing chess at a table) to the fantastical (demon emerging from dice). The storyteller will pick a card, say a short description (any description will work: song lyrics, popular sayings, movie quotes, you decide!), and places his card in the middle of the table. The other players pick a card from their hand which they think ALSO fits the original description. The storyteller then shuffles the cards and reveals them one by one. Everyone but the storyteller then tries to guess which of the cards was the original storyteller’s card.
Besides overall aesthetics, the scoring mechanism is my favorite part of the game. If the storyteller is too descriptive of their card and everyone guesses the storyteller’s card correctly, the storyteller gets no points and everyone else gets 2 points. If the storyteller is too vague and no one guesses the original storyteller’s card, the same result. The only way for the storyteller to win points is to successfully get some (but not all!) other players to guess their card. In that case, the storyteller and anyone who guessed that card gets 3 points.
The rules state that the game ends when the last card has been drawn, but my weekly gaming group generally plays to 30.
This is a great game for introducing people to artsy board games, and has easily ousted “Apples to Apples” as my family’s go-to party game.
EDIT: Apologies for those who caught the first version, it was a mis-paste.
Three to six players, the more the better.
About half an hour to play, but very flexible. Normally it lasts as long as the players are interested.
Think Apples to Apples crossed with Balderdash, and you’ve got a handle on Dixit. It’s a game for talking to friends, for making friends, for learning about friends. The base mechanics of the game only really require the (beautifully illustrated) cards, a way to number the ones on the table from one to however many players you have, and a way to secretly vote on one of the chosen cards; if you have more than six, I believe it would work with up to eight, but I’ve only played it with four at most.
Dixit is a game of inside jokes and references. Everyone has a hand of uniquely illustrated cards. The active player chooses one from their hand, places it face-down on the table, and gives a short description to the other players. The others must then choose a card from their hands and place it face-down with the first. The chosen cards get shuffled and flipped over, and everyone but the active player must secretly vote on one card. After everyone has voted, the active player reveals which one they chose.
The scoring system is where Dixit shines. If everyone chooses the active player’s card, they all get two points and the active player gets nothing. This ensures that your description won’t be overly precise. If nobody chooses the active player’s card, they all get two points and the active player gets nothing. This ensures that your description won’t be overly vague. Between these two situations, the active player gets three points as an award for an interesting description, everyone that guesses correctly gets three points as an award for knowing the active player, and each non-active player also gets a point for each vote their card got.
Because of this system, you’re rewarded for sharing some background with the other players. For example, I once gave the clue “my mom” at a game with my wife. The cards were flipped to reveal a few interesting things, including a ladybug, my mom’s favorite animal. My wife knew exactly which one to vote for, and the other people at the table were at a loss. However, if you only have one person at the table that you share this kind of knowledge with, you’re at a disadvantage: remember, they’ll also get three points, as well as any points other players give them through their vote. Therefore, you must rotate who you choose when making your reference.
Dixit is loads of casual, friendly fun, and lots of conversation comes out of why people chose the cards that they did. If you play with the same people long enough, it gets more and more difficult to come up with a good clue, too — I can never use my mom’s ladybug fanhood again with my friends from Oregon, for example. Points are tracked on a VP track, but could just as easily be written, allowing you to play to a particular time (when the brownies come out) or score, or until the cards run out (recommended). An expansion pack of cards is also readily available (and worth it), but it doesn’t fit well in the original box.
Recommended for a casual group of good friends, as an after dinner snack of a game.
Everyone gather round, it is story time!
Dixit is an interesting little game. It is incredibly simple on the one hand, but has just enough strategy to it that you never know exactly how a game might play out. It is a good time for friends and family, and equally so for the new guy or gal to your group. The rules are simple, and the game will never play out the same way twice.
Opening the box, you will find 84 cards with various whimsical color artwork, 36 tokens used for voting in 6 different colors One scoreboard
84 new cards
36 voting tokens in 6 different colors, numbered 1 to 6
6 game pieces in 6 different colors
I am not much of an art critic, however, as the art on the cards takes center stage here, I can at least attest to the fact that, in my opinion, the art does its job. I take no issue with the quality of the components of the game either.
The game states it is for 3-6 players. It is my opinion that the closer you can get to 6 the better. I cannot see a group of three or even four having a good time with this, but 5 or 6 should do great.
So, what are we going to do with this stuff? First, everyone will get 6 voting tokens of a particular color numbered 1-6 and 6 of the cards. One player will be chosen as the first “storyteller” This player will say a word, phrase, sentence, song, etc. that they feel describes the card they plan to play. The storyteller puts their chosen card down face-down. Each of the other players will play a card from their hand face-down that they believe best fits the storyteller’s description. The storyteller will shuffle these cards and lay them out face up in a line.
Each of the other players will then lay down one of their voting tokens with the number card (1-6, left to right) they believe best fits the storyteller’s description.
This is where the game gets interesting. The storyteller wants most of the players to pick their card, but they do not want everyone to pick it. If everyone or no one picks the storyteller’s card, the storyteller gets no points, and everyone else gets 2 points. Otherwise, the storyteller and everyone else who picked the storyteller’s card gets 3 points a piece, and players other than the storyteller get one point for each vote their card received. After the round is over, everyone draws back up to 6 cards. The game continues until players can no longer get 6 cards in their hand.
This means that the player has to be able to balance his clues between being appropriately descriptive of their card while not being blatantly obvious.
This game, I think, tends to lend itself better to playing with a group comprised of mostly people you know well. Friends, family, that sort of thing. It can be pretty hilarious when you use an inside joke to describe just the right card, for instance. Aside from that, you can get a decent feel for how your description will go over. That being said, I think that introducing new people to the game is great. I would just do it one at a time.
This is a game that pretty much anyone can understand the rules 100% after playing one hand, and even the younger kids can get involved, although I would say the game suggestion of 8 is pretty good, as younger kids have trouble with understanding why they should not give obvious clues. The game takes all of half an hour to play tops, so there is not a big time commitment either. Works as a good filler, or for when you have folks over who just are not into your normal board games. I would compare it to Apples to Apples in that respect.
Dixit is a great game. There isn’t any reason why replay would suffer, as you can always come up with a different story for every card everytime you play, and, if your household is like mine, there will be plenty of laughs, and at the end of the game, no one will really care who won.
Apples to Apples is sort of a party game archetype: one player takes the role of judge and plays a card, everyone else plays cards in response, and the judge determines the result. Simple enough.
With Apples to Apples, though, it might be too simple. Most games descend into pandering to the current judge or rehashing the same tired material: if someone says “I have the PERFECT card!”, it’s probably Helen Keller or Hitler. There’s really just not much there.
Dixit is often cited as the paragon of gaming creativity, and I’m generally inclined to agree. But it’s impossible to deny that it doesn’t have its roots in the A2A archetype. Dixit, however, adds a great deal to that baseline.
Each player in Dixit has a hand of big, beautiful cards with wonderful and surreal illustrations. Even if you decide the game isn’t for you, take some time to enjoy images of the cards online. It’s worth it! The judge, or “storyteller” in Dixit parlance, takes a card from his or her hand and tells a little story about it. A sentence, a single word, a fragment of a song. Whatever.
Then, each other player plays a card from their hand that they think goes well with the storyteller’s story. All the cards played are shuffled face down and the judge lays them out.
Each other player now attempts to pick which card was the storyteller’s. Points are given out based on who votes for what: the storyteller doesn’t want to be so obvious that everyone picks her card, but not so obscure that no one does. Then, hands are refreshed up to six and the game moves on. Minor changes to a simple archetype.
Where Dixit shines is the depth of possibilities in those cards. The illustrations are simple, but evocative. They’re not abstract, but the disparate figures are juxtaposed with fantastic settings. There are so many intricate details in each composition, it’s quite possible that four voters might have latched on to four different aspects of the same image. The possibilities for creative (and surprising!) free association are enormous.
Of course, that enormity can be overwhelming. When a new player takes their first crack at being storyteller, it can be overwhelming trying to pick a card and craft a perfect story to go with it. I’ve found that even ostensibly creative folks often balk at the possibilities. And people that are utterly sure they’re uncreative can just shut down at the task.
But once the game gets rolling, even the most staid gamers can get into the action. Even if a player isn’t big on surreal flights of fancy, they learn to make their sentences play evoke associations with their own card based on the cultural experiences they share with the other players.
That, if anything, is the main skill required to win in Dixit, which alone puts it miles ahead of A2A’s tired jokes and pandering. But I couldn’t in good faith encourage anyone to play Dixit to win. Enjoy the amazing art, work the right side of your brain, and enjoy a bit of free association–with the cards and the friends you’re playing with.
Dixit is an absolutely wonderful game. It can be explained in mere minutes and has a mechanic so compelling that I’ve yet to see a player not become immensely engaged by the second turn.
Dixit is a game about storytelling and description. The active player must pick one of the beautifully illustrated, bizarre cards from his/her hand and describe it without showing the picture. The other players must pick a card from their own hand that they think matches the description.
Then, players pick the one they think is the original card.
The brilliance of the game lies in the art. It’s bizarre, imaginative, and like a truly strange children’s book. The game never plays the same because no two players will view the cards differently. You can play it with the same people and the stories will change based on the moods, the cards dealt, and more.
I cannot think of a game that has made me laugh harder than Dixit. Furthermore, on at least 3 occasions I’ve had friends get out their iPhone to buy the game on Amazon before we even finished our first game.
Everyone should own Dixit, at least everyone with an imagination and a wicked sense of humor.
This is truly a game that sparks the imagination and makes you smile.
In Dixit, everybody has a hand of cards with artwork on each card. Each round, one player will pick a card in their hand, say a word or phrase that describes the card, but is obscure enough that not everybody will guess his/her card, and lays the card down. Every other player picks a card in their own hand to match the word or phrase that was said. Then all cards are revealed simultaneously, and everybody except the “storyteller” votes on which card belonged to the storyteller.
Anybody who wasn’t a storyteller that had somebody wrongfully guess their card scores that many points. The storyteller scores points as long as at least one person guessed their card, but not everybody. Everybody who correctly guessed the storyteller’s card also scores points.
The artwork on the cards are beautiful. The cards are oversized, and the art fills the entire card. The pictures are all very unusual, which contributes to players coming up with creative or obscure phrases. The strangeness of the cards also allows players to interpret many different cards in many different ways.
This game plays with as few as 3, but is best with 5 or 6.
Pros:
Beautiful artwork on the cards
Fair scoring system
Simple straightforward rules
A fun casual game for all variety of players
Cons:
Requires creative and imaginative players
I write reviews for a game shop in Melbourne, and one of our best selling party games is Dixit. This is just an excerpt from a review I wrote of one of the finest party games to emerge in recent years.
For the full review , follow the link: http://gameshop.com.au/blog/thegamesshopper/2012/10/22/review-dixit/
“Dixit is partially a game about telling stories and partially a game about knowing the sorts of stories your friends are likely to tell. It’s more a game of perception and deduction than a bluffing game, and since there are no skill requirements aside from the ability to look at a picture and think of a word, it’s a game that anybody with two fully assembled cortices can play.
The game is played using a deck of some of the most gorgeous and surreal cards you’ll ever see in a game. Each card portrays a picture, often loaded with nonspecific symbolism and unattached metaphors. There is no right answer to what these icons represent – the interpretation is purely up to the players, and this lack of restriction must have made the artist just giddy when he was creating the art.
Now, the cards aren’t exactly scrambled in their complexity either. There’s usually some discernible theme or motif that multiple viewers can pick out, and that is where the game begins.
To play Dixit, the players all hold a handful of these image cards and take turns as the storyteller. The storyteller picks a card, tells a story about it, and then places it face down. I use the term story loosely. Typically, it consists of a simple phrase, or even just one word.
“To the stars!” “Seven.” “No more slices.” “There’s a fly in my soup.” “Drip drip drip drop.”
Listening to a game of Dixit from outside the room is often akin to visiting a psychiatric ward. But the stories don’t end with mere words, oh no. Instead of speaking you can whistle a tune, tap out a series of Morse Code knocks, or just give it a cryptic bobbing of the head. The point is that the storyteller just needs to communicate something about their card to the other players.
The real challenge of Dixit is when it’s your turn to be the storyteller, since in order to get points you can’t make your story too obvious or too oblique. You get 0 points if everyone guesses your card, and 0 points if nobody guesses it. For the storyteller to gain any points at all, only a few of the players can guess his card. It’s a fine task of threading the needle and appealing to certain people’s thinking while obfuscating others’.
Dixit is a gripping game because it’s all about the people that play it, and their reactions to the cards. It can be joyful or uplifting, but it can also be sad, be tragic, or lonesome. It’s often funny, and can also be sobering. But the one thing Dixit always provides is fun.”
I got this very recently and have only played it a couple of times. I really like the simple rules and the cards are absolutely gorgeous.
The game play is very simple. Everyone has a hand full of cards and players take turns looking at them and making up a simple story for them. The story can be a sentence, or a single word, or a sound, or really anything. All players then submit a card from their hand that they think matches the story, and then all players vote, except for the story teller. If at least one person, but not everyone votes for the Story Teller, he/she and everyone who voted for that story gets 3 points. If everyone votes for the story teller, everyone EXCEPT the story teller gets 2 points. If someone else votes for your story you get 1 point.
The cards have fantastic art on them and simple words like “Loneliness” or “A Bad Idea” can easily match a number of cards. The game comes with little rabbit tokens to be used for the scoring track which is part of the inside of the box. Everything fits neatly into the box without a lot of space left over and the cardboard voting chips are very good quality for what they are.
We played this a couple of times, once with only 3 players and once with 6. It worked much better with 6 players and is easily something I’d bring out at a party.
Fun, and beautiful and sure to leave a mark in the minds of the players. It’s a simple party game but it’s also a chance to tell a simple story, and that’s unique in the category of Party Games.
Dixit is a party/social game where players place cards face down that best fit the first player’s phrase. The phrase can be anything as long as it’s tied to something real. It plays 3 to 6 players, and is better with more players, and weighs in right around 30 minutes a game.
Dixit reminds me of Apples to Apples, except I love Dixit and cannot stand Apples to Apples. Dixit rewards creativity, and still manages to be funny and entertaining. The game comes with 84 large cards, all of which have spectacular surrealist artwork. The short playing time, high quality art and ease of play makes this a great light game to start off a night with, or make a night out of!
Dixit does have some flaws, however. It is prone to runaway winners, at least in my experience. And, even though it’s a party game, it tends to reward couples or close friends, and punish the members of the game that are new to the circle.
There isn’t much left to say about the game. If you’re a fan of party games, give this a try. If you’re a fan of creative games that keep your brain working, give this a try. But if you have a group made up of acquaintances or not-so-close friends, you might want to give this a pass.
This can be a very tough game if you haven’t used the creative side of your brain in a while, but it’ll slowly come back to you. It’s amazing how many different interpretations of one image there can be in a small group of friends. Trying to get a few people (but not everybody) to see what you’re seeing is much more difficult than it sounds. There is a certain amount of creative finesse that you have to apply in this game. It’s a very simple concept for a game and that makes it very appealing to new/young players. The points system can take a little time to completely understand, but it’s not a big deal.
Dixit is definitely a great party/family game and has a ton of replay value, limited only to the imagination of the players. The art on all the cards are amazing in their detail, creativity, and bright vivid colors. Really a treat to play.
The cards, pieces, and board are high quality, so you don’t have to worry too much about short term wear and tear, unless you’re play this game with infants who like to put everything in their mouth (bad idea on many levels.) It also comes in an organized box, which makes set up and clean up all the more simpler.
All in all, a nice, easy going game with lots of laughs and smiles involved.