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A lot of games can be played equally well by any group of players assuming they have an understanding of the rules; Settlers of Catan would fall into this category as would Ticket to Ride and party games like Jungle Speed. However the enjoyment of another category of games depends almost entirely on the people sat around the table; role playing games like Dragon Age and D&D as well as games like Munchkin and Say Anything. Dixit is one of these games, whether you consider it the best game you’ve ever played or immediately relegate it to the pile of “games we never bother getting out” is going to depend almost entirely on who you play with.
On first impressions Dixit is an odd game. The board tokens are inexplicably wooden rabbits, the board itself is a simple score track printed inside the box, and the cards, well the cards are just plain surreal. For those unfamiliar with it, Dixit is a highly creative game using illustrated cards. The player whose turn it is (the storyteller) chooses a card from his hand and says something about it before placing it face down on the table, this can be anything from a single word to a phrase, song lyric, quotation, someone’s name or the title of a painting/film/book/etc. – absolutely anything. The other players then choose a card (or cards) from their own hands that they feel match this statement and add them to the first card. All are shuffled and each player except the storyteller votes for the card they believe was the storyteller’s card. The storyteller then reveals their card. If everyone or no one has found it, then the storyteller receives zero points and everyone else receives two. In other cases the storyteller and the players who identified the correct card all score three. The trick therefore is to create a clue than is neither too obvious nor too obscure, so that some players but not all correctly identify your card. The winner is the player furthest along the score track when the last card has been drawn.
I first brought it out at a games night with my husband and a complete newbie (it was his first night playing Ticket to Ride and Zombie Dice too) and the look of utter confusion on his face as he turned over his hand still has me laughing several weeks later whenever it pops unbidden into my head. After trying to explain the rules, giving up and launching into some rounds, everyone soon had the gist of the game down. We discovered fairly quickly that a thorough understand of the other players’ thought processes and some shared hobbies/tastes was a major bonus during play. Our friend played a card using the phrase “Andy Bell.” I had no idea at all who that was and ended up playing cards completely at random from my hand. My husband however instantly realized that this was a reference to an ex-member of the band Oasis who previously played in another band called Hurricane #1. As a result he was able to correctly guess our friend’s card, an image of a tornado*. A similar event occurred later as I correctly linked my husband’s clue “this way Arthur” to an image of a torch-bearing arm rising from water; our friend who has less knowledge of Arthurian legends was entirely baffled. As we played I did find myself wondering how this would impact a younger player, say an older tween or young teenager, playing with a group of adults, simply because they are likely to have less to draw on due to their age and relative lack of experiences.
I have really enjoyed playing Dixit once I got past the initial fear of having a mind-blank over all my cards and being unable to come up with any clues. We have been playing the three-player variant rules in which players hold seven cards rather than six and the two non-storyteller players during each round put down two cards instead of one; I often found myself holding on to certain cards for which I had a clue in mind for a later round. I can imagine that after several games regular players would become very familiar with the cards and players who often play together might begin to spot one another using the same clues. However a number of expansions and variant games are available to increase the number of cards, massively increasing the game's replay potential.
Dixit is most certainly a game that inspires conversation as players discuss the reasons behind their clues and complain about those from the rest of the group, "How was anyone supposed to guess that card from that?" As a result I have found myself laughing more during Dixit than most other games we have played recently, except perhaps Shave a Sheep! I'm very much looking forward to getting a large group of like-minded people together soon for an epic game with a few drinks although I dread to think what kind of clues people will invent with a little alcohol thrown into the mix. Whether you’re playing a big party game with several players or just a small three-person game, Dixit is great; I just wish there were a way to play with only two players so I could enjoy it more often.
A copy of Dixit was provided free for this review.
*As I’m fairly sure my fellow GeekMom Patricia is horrified that we would mix up our weather system terminologies so terribly, I would like to reassure her that the difference between a hurricane and a tornado is duly noted but cast aside for the purposes of playing Dixit effectively.
