Looking for a new game to buy: Dixit

There are two kinds of game-playing people in the world to my reckoning:

[1] Those who were brought up on what are now old school games like Monopoly, Risk, Cluedo, Scrabble and an assortment of simple card playing games like Uno [with the ‘fast card’ rule else essentially you are taking turns to put down cards in a row, please people], and

[2] Those who have played Settlers or Catan or any game that has been created since then and influenced by that type and style of game from Seven Wonders and Dominion to Puerto Rico, Stone Age and more…

The old school games [which there is nothing wrong with] generally have one focus and mode of play and you try do that better than everyone else and you win [and most of them have a certain degree of luck to them where it comes down to dice rolls or right cards etc]

The new school games generally are multi-layered – one reason why i believe Settlers was such a hit [as well as Carcassonne and others like it] was that determining how the board looks is a part of the game and so every game is different. Then there are usually a few [or a lot once you hit Cities and Knights] different paths you can take towards securing victory. I prefer the new school games generally because there are more options and often a certain amount of space for strategy.

Then there is my dad who is in his own group and just doesn’t like games at all, although he will gladly sit in the next room shouting out [and getting them right!] Trivial Pursuit answers while the rest of us are playing…

And then there is Dixit. There are so many great games these days that it is no longer about trying to find a good game to get but more trying to find out which good game to get [kind of like Series – there is really no reason these days to force yourself to watch a bad tv series cos there is so much quality on offer] and Dixit for me feels like a great addition [or start] to the family games pile.

For this main reason – apart from my dad i think it will work for pretty much anyone who has some inclination towards games.

So what is it? Well i describe it as a cross  between Pictionary and Balderdash. Each person is dealt six cards with various scenes/pictures on them – the person  whose turn it is chooses one card and without showing people gives a word or phrase or song lyric  or sound effect that describes their card. Everyone else chooses a card that they feel best represents that [you get points for people choosing your card so you want to make people guess yours] and then they get shuffled up and put down on the table and without being allowed to vote for your own card, each person votes and tries to guess the card of the person who is on. That person also has to place a vote on one they obviously know is wrong.

What makes this tricky is that if everyone votes for yours you get no points. If no-one votes for yours you get no points. You need a combination of people voting for yours and not voting for yous – so you can’t be too obvious or too obscure. When the votes are revealed people score points and everyone gets dealt one new card and the next person takes over as the lead person. So simple and yet so much fun.

It is set up for 4 to 6 people but if you have more you can divide into teams and so i would say it would comfortably work for 12 or even 18 people.

What’s cool about it is you can play it at a simple level and everyone will feel included or you can play it with tons of strategy so doesn’t really leave people out. We took it to another level by adding the rule that each round a different player adds the rule of clue. So for one round you had to give a song lyric as your clue, for the next you could only use sound effects and the following round was facial expressions so you can just imagine how silly and fun it got.

Really worth investing some money into. Because different people play and the cards will come out in different orders i imagine this will remain fresh for years to come and there are expansions you can buy for new and exciting themed packs of cards. We are still on the basic game but looking forward to picking up an expansion some day.

Get it, play it and let me know what you think…

What game would you recommend?