In this Dixit game review, we’ll break down everything you need to know about this award-winning board game from Libellud designed to improve kids’ imaginations, and descriptive skills, as well as problem-solving and strategizing.
We love board games and review different ones every month! They’re such a good way to bond with your family while helping your children develop important thinking skills.
What is Dixit?
Dixit is a wonderfully simple game focused on storytelling. It can accommodate 3-6 players, so it’s just right for a family or small group.
The first player tells a brief tale or short phrase about the beautiful illustration on their card. The remaining players select a card from their hand that pairs well with the first player’s card.
At the end, the storyteller mixes their own card with the received cards and flips them over. The other players must choose the card that best fits the storyteller’s card. There are voting tokens to reward the players with the chosen cards.
Scoring is more advantageous when only some, rather than all, players guess the active player’s card correctly. The winner is the first to 30, or the player with the highest score when all cards are exhausted.
Check out this video from Teach the Table for full details on how to play.
Dixit Game Review
This is a stunning-looking game, and with the expansion packs available, covering Revelations, Daydream, Quest, Memories, Journey, and Origins to enhance the base game. The original cards are limiting though, and it is worth investing in an expansion to keep longevity. Particularly with older children, having only a single set of cards is likely to reduce gameplay options.
The thing that sets the Dixit game apart from similar games is the beautiful imagery. The cards have dreamlike illustrations that naturally draw out your creativity. They’re appropriate for players of all ages and add so much to the experience of playing this game.
I love the goal of the game, as well. It’s a great way to help foster storytelling and creative thinking in children.
However, when we played the game; we found that it was difficult to come up with descriptions for the picture cards that ALL the players were able to guess. This meant that it was hard to get a clear winner, as because of the way the scoring worked, everyone largely followed the same scoring path.
It is likely that after playing the game a few times, descriptions would improve, and this might be solved. But the initial limitations put the family off trying to play too many times, so sadly we haven’t been able to explore this. Perhaps your family will be less impatient!
Some of the illustrations are a little “odd” too; so we can imagine young players may struggle somewhat. The kids were a little confused by some of the images, and couldn’t work out suitable descriptions. I imagine this will improve over time as they practice this skill and learn more about the world.
Overall – 6/10
This game is beautiful, and a lovely idea, but just didn’t seem to be for us. It didn’t suitably inspire the kids; perhaps that was a lack of our imagination, or that the kids were just too bright or knew each other too well, so we all kept getting the answers right. Alternatively, perhaps it was that we weren’t clever enough to come up with answers that fooled some people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time! 🤣
For example; with the above card, you could describe it obviously:
“Ring of magic.”
Or perhaps for the older kids, something a little more cryptic.
“Hare running in circles.”
But even with the subtle clues (or we thought they were clever anyway) – the kids were getting it right all the time….
We totally accept that this isn’t the case for everyone, and judging by the reviews on Amazon, a lot of people disagree. We imagine that it’d be a lot of fun for others, but we are reviewing from a personal perspective, so for our family, it wasn’t our favourite game, but we can see how it’d be entertaining for others.
Our family favorite board games
Overall, the Dixit game is worth a try, but it wasn’t one of our favorites. We preferred these other games more:
Perhaps our kids are just into world domination, and not pretty pictures…! 😉We hope you like our Dixit board game review; do check out our other articles, including more board game reviews, printables, and great parenting tips. If you like what you see, do subscribe to our weekly newsletter as well.
Thanks for coming to see us today, and hope to see you here again soon.
Helen
Helen
Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, and website editor; and this site is (we think) the only Social Enterprise parenting magazine!Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time.KiddyCharts has reach of over 1.1million across social and the site. The blog works with big family brands (including travel) to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10.It gives 51%+ profits to Reverence for Life, who fund a number of important initiatives in Africa, including bringing running water and basic equipment to a school in Tanzania.Helen has worked as a digital marketing consultant (IDM qualified) with various organisations, including Channel Mum, Truprint, Talk to Mums, and Micro Scooters. She loves to be creative in the brand campaigns she works on.Get in touch TODAY!