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Dixit
Pick a card, don't be obvious.
4.2
(0 reviews)
At a glance
- Players
- 3-8
- Play Time
- 30 min
- Ages
- 8+
✓ What We Love
- •Easy to teach
- •You can keep a fast rhythm so it is difficult to get bored
- •Very replayable
- •The art is beautiful
✗ Could Be Better
- •If you are bad at it, you can get bored
- •You really need at least 4 players
- •The more you have in common, the funnier it gets
- •It's easy to cheat
- •Not a great game for players that trouble deciding (this can slow it down)
About Dixit
In Dixit you become a storyteller, but with a little help: you have the image, you just need a story. And when I say a story, not an entire story, a word, a sound, something that will help you fool some but not all of the players.
Some players find it hard to understand, so, just think about this:
You only need to fool someone else, that’s the entire game. Make one of the other players guess wrong, don’t overthink it.
What makes this game cool is that you get to see what is in your friend’s or family member’s mind when choosing cards. It’s one of the best family board games precisely because it hasn’t been dumbed down — it works on everyone at the table regardless of how many games they’ve played. You will have one turn where you pick a card for the others to guess and then you’ll be guessing the others’ cards. That’s it, this is Dixit.
Released in 2008 by French publisher Libellud, designed by Jean-Louis Roubira with illustrations by Marie Cardouat, Dixit went on to win the 2010 Spiel des Jahres (the Academy Award of board games, yes, it sounds nerdy, sorry), the hobby’s most important award.
It became one of the definitive gateway party games, simple enough to teach in two minutes yet open-ended enough that no two rounds play alike and a great opportunity for that friend who thinks is amazing at Tarot do her thing. More than 15 years and a long line of expansions later, it still earns its spot on the shelf.
📖 Rulebook
How to Play Dixit
Setup
- Each player picks a color, in the shape of a rabbit, so cool, I know, and places it on the start space of the scoring track.
- Take the set of voting tokens numbered 1 through 6 in your color.
- Shuffle the 84 image cards and deal 6 to each player. Keep your hand hidden.
- Place the remaining cards face-down as the draw pile.
- Choose a first storyteller. The role passes to the left each round.
The Round
A round has four phases in this order:
- Clue. The storyteller secretly picks one card from their hand and says a clue inspired by it: a word, phrase, sound, song, quote, anything. They set the card face-down.
- Submit. Every other player picks the card from their own hand that best fits the clue and passes it to the storyteller face-down.
- Vote. The storyteller shuffles all submitted cards with their own and lays them in a numbered row. When laying them down, and this is important, don't say anything, because if someone goes "oh, that one is beautiful", you'll be letting everyone know that that is not your card. Be smart, please. Everyone except the storyteller secretly votes for which card they think is the storyteller's, using a numbered token.
- Reveal and score. Flip the votes and tally.
Scoring
Sometimes this is hard, and it is easily to get confused, so make sure 2 players understand this.- Everyone guessed the storyteller's card: storyteller 0, all other players 2 each.
- Nobody guessed it: storyteller 0, all other players 2 each.
- Some but not all guessed it: storyteller 3, plus 3 for each player who guessed correctly.
- Decoy bonus: +1 point for every vote your own submitted card received.
After scoring, everyone draws back up to 6 cards.
The Clue
This is the whole game. A clue everyone gets scores the storyteller nothing. A clue nobody gets also scores nothing. You want exactly some of the table to find your card and the rest to miss. Aim for the gap between too obvious and too clever, or you'll keep landing on zero and wondering why.
Three-Player Variant
At three players the standard rules go thin, so each player submits two cards instead of one to fatten the lineup of decoys. It works in a pinch, but the game is sharper at four to six. Way sharper, but more it takes too long, the sweet spot is 5, 6 tops.
Winning
The game ends when the draw pile runs out and hands can't be refilled. The player highest on the scoring track wins. The track runs to 30, and most games finish right around there. If there is a draw, just play another round.
