Dixit Game review

Over the Holidays the wife’s sister picked up Dixit. My first play through was on New Years eve and I wasn’t quite at my peak game learning condition that night. Let’s just say things were a little fuzzy. Since that night we have played quite a few times because the in-laws made a terrific find.

The rules were simple to learn, I was able to quickly grasp the concept even in my fogged frame of mind. All of the players receive a hand of cards. Upon these cards are oddly beautiful artworks, some quite bizarre. A player is selected to lead by selecting a card from their hand without showing it to the other players. The player gives a clue to the card by saying a word, phrase, singing a song, or… whatever. The other players then s

elect a card from their hand and give it face down to the player who gave the clue. The cards are shuffled and laid face up.

At this time players chose which card they believe is the right card. They do so by selecting one of their numbered tokens without showing it. Once all players have made their selection they show their tokens. Any correct answers score points and any wrong answers score points for the player who played that card. So other players will play cards they believe best fit the clue in order to earn points.

Scoring is rather interesting for the active player. The clue giver gets zero points if either all players or no players select their card. Therefore in order for the clue giver to score points clues must be vague enough to ensure at least one player selects the wrong card. But the clue must also be clear enough so at least one player selects the correct card. It creates a need to be able to anticipate how other players think.

How do you get window?

The game really drives creativity and shows how other players’ minds work. An important example is a friend who used the clue “Window." All other players played cards with windows in the artwork. Unfortunately his card had a kid and a bear with a slingshot which made him think of a broken window. No actual windows in the artwork. He was too creative and complicated in his clue and we made fun of him all night.

I find that the game is fantastic for working on interpretation of art and creative thinking. It’s simple enough for kids to understand but still complex enough for adults to enjoy making it a great family game.

There two negatives to Dixit. Some of the artwork is a little bizarre, enough so that it just doesn’t work with everyone’s creative processes all the time. Also the limited number of cards means that the same artwork will be seen repeatedly. This will lead to players getting in to a habit of repeating clues and the game becoming stale. Thankfully there are some expansions to the game for when this starts to become an issue.

To sum up Dixit is a great game for any game group. It is both simple to learn and deep in creative nature. This game is fantastic for building art appreciation and interpretation as well as driving creative description. While the bizarre nature of the artwork doesn’t play to everyone'

s tastes it can still be fun to attempt to discern the meaning of it. The limited amount of cards can begin to lessen replay value but there are expansion sets available to add variety.

I would recommend this game for families who want a goofy way to build their children’s imaginations and work on their creativity. I would also recommend this for adult groups who appreciate art and enjoy being creatively obtuse in their description of it.

Remember to support your local board game store!

New year new gaming post

Hello dear readers. I know I haven’t posted in about a month and I’m sorry about that. The Christmas season didn’t leave a lot of opportunities for games or blogging. But the New Year may hold promise for some serious gaming.

Of course we did do some gaming: Christmas day was spent with the wife’s side of the family and we took time to play Cards Against Humanity and watched the Doctor who special together. I didn’t get anything board game related for Christmas but hopefully I will make it to the store sometime soon. We decided to nerd in the New Year at home this time around. Friends of ours got a stone raclette grill for Christmas so we pulled out our fondue pot and had a fantastic fondue dinner. Guess what we followed up with: board games. The two other couples from dinner and our international man of mystery friend dropped in later. We played some Cards Against Humanity, followed by The Resistance, and then we were introduced to Dixit. Honestly I will need to play Dixit again as I had imbibed in way too much New Years spirit to be able to give a decent review. We ended the night playing Monty Python Fluxx with the one couple who ended up crashing on our air mattress.

We have to do a fondue/game night again. Grilled meat, melted cheese and geekery all go so well together. But 8 people maximum will fit for that kind of night in our house.

For Christmas the wife and I got some gift cards for home improvement stores and we spent a little of it on book shelves for the game room. We organized it a little more down there and we think we are ready for Lazy Sunday gaming. Beginning in February we will have a list of friends and family that will come over on Sunday afternoons for some board game fun: whoever can show is in by 13:00 at the earliest and out by 18:00 at the latest kind of thing. I hope this will get more friends and family into board gaming and introduce us to more games my friends own. Which I will then review for you.

I’m also trying to start an RPG group: Pen and paper role playing. I could GM for the Palladium system as it’s the one I’m most familiar with. I have ideas for most of their lines but I think the Heroes Unlimited game would probably be the most accessible to new players and easiest to start since players could just pick up Century Station heroes and start playing.

I’m running a little low on games to review but once the holiday bills get under control I should be able to budget for some games. Money is a little tight so the game budget will probably only allow for me to move to a monthly post format, unless my lottery investment pays off of course.

In the mean time feel free to comment below on which games I should be looking in to for my board game budget.

Until next time, hope you have a fantastic New Year with more fun playing new games and old favorites!