ASMODEE Dixit (2021 Refresh)

Dixit, winner of the 2010 Spiel des Jahres award (Family Game of the Year), is a hugely popular party game that’s all about using your imagination. If you like games such as Codenames and Mysterium where it’s all about describing, suggesting or giving clues, chances are you will adore Dixit!

The difference here is that this is not a co-operative board game where you are all working together (or there are two teams competing against each other). It’s every person for themselves. To win, be the first to 30 points, or the person with the most points when the deck runs out.

Dixit comes with 84 unique cards, each with wonderful, vivid and sometimes quite surreal artwork on them. Players start with a hand of six cards, and one player will start as the ‘Storyteller’. They will pick one of their cards and describe it in a sentence. This can be as wild, bland, creative or imaginative as they please. Then everyone will discreetly pick a card from their hand that they think best matches that sentence. All cards are shuffled and revealed face-up. Then players have to secretly vote using tokens (which are simultaneously flipped) on which card they think belongs to the Storyteller.

If everyone picks the Storyteller’s card (or if no one guessed right), then everyone scores two points, except the Storyteller. If only some people guessed correctly, then they and the Storyteller score three points. If others pick your own card when you are not the Storyteller, you alone score 1 point per vote for your card. (You are not allowed to vote for your own card!).

Therefore, it quickly becomes a case of the Storyteller having to balance proceedings. If they’re too vague in their descriptions, they risk alienating everyone from guessing their card. But at the same time, they cannot make it too obvious, because then everyone will know it and they’ll score nothing! At the end of each turn, everyone receives a new card to their hand, and then the next player becomes the Storyteller.

In some ways, Dixit is less of a board game and more of a fun activity you can experience with friends or family. Libellud have done a great job with the cards themselves. They’re lovely and big (8x12cm, so bigger than regular playing cards) and the cartoony artwork is adorable, with a surprising amount of detail in each one. Also, the interior of the box itself is the game board, which is sure to delight younger players!

Dixit’s rules are incredibly simple to teach. You’ll be up and running within 90 seconds of lifting the lid – meaning it’s not going to intimidate those who are new to board games. The whole table will be laughing in no time at all, especially when people guess the wrong cards for the most bizarre of reasons!