Dixit means to show, point out, declare, or refer to and that’s exactly what you do in the party game Dixit, where you use oversized cards with breathtaking art on them to get imaginations running.

Before we get any further, we’ll make a pit stop at the unimaginative details.

The Fiddly Bits
Designer: Jean-Louis Roubira
Publisher: Asmodee
Date Released: 2008
Number of Players: 3-6
Age Range: 8 and up
Setup Time: nominal
Play Time: less than 30 minutes
Game Mechanisms:
Simultaneous Action Selection
Voting

Game Flow:
Players have a hand of six picture cards, and each player takes turns as the storyteller. The storyteller picks one card from their hand and judging by the picture on the card, gives an audible clue to the other players. These clues can be as complex as a few sentences or as simple as a sound effect, but the clue has to relate to the picture on the card. Once the storyteller picks their card and gives their clue, they put their card face down on the table.

Then, the other players pick a card from their hand that best matches the clue the storyteller gave and puts their cards face down, next to the storyteller’s card. The storyteller shuffles the cards and reveals them in a line face up, labeling them with numbered chips. Every player – besides the storyteller – has to vote for which card they think is the storyteller’s card.

If the clue was too on the nose and everybody finds the correct card or the clue was too obscure and no one finds the correct card, the storyteller gets no points, and the other players score points. But if one or more players find the correct card, but not everyone, the storyteller gets 3 points, the player(s) who guessed correctly get 3 points, and players (who aren’t the storyteller) score 1 point for every vote for the card they played.

At the end of each round, players draw up to their hand size of six cards, and the duty of storyteller passes to the player on the left. The game ends when a player reaches 30 points or if you run out of cards. The player with the most points wins.

Review:
Dixit is weird, but it’s a great weird. You can have fun just looking at the pretty pictures on the cards, and people’s clues grant a portal into their brain. That might not be as good of a thing.

I only have two complains with Dixit: I don’t know how to classify the game, and it gets repetitive if you play the same cards with the same group of people. Both of these things aren’t real knocks on the game, and thankfully, Dixit has plenty of expansions to jazz up the cards. It’s fun and easy to play and learn. You can even mix up the gameplay. I played a game where we only used movie titles as the clues for the cards, and we had a heap of laughs.

Then, you have the wooden bunnies as play pieces. I think the first words out of my mouth when I opened the box were “Pink? I can be a pink bunny? Oh, I have to be the pink bunny.” Every game should offer pink.

Verdict:
A gorgeous game that makes your mind work in ways it doesn’t always work. You get to flex your imagination with this creative game.