Cardboard Corner: Review of Dixit

Coconut. You either love it or hate it. A specific flavor, I’ve yet to meet a person on the fence about it. And indeed, there are just some things in life which have no middle ground. I can’t help but feel Dixit (2008) is one such board game. Grooves with your mentality, and it’s coconut cake with coffee. Confused as to what all the fuss is about, best move on to another game. So what could make it a coconut groove for you?

I’ve thought about the question, and I think the answer is a like of poetry—or at least an appreciation of the layered possibilities of imagery and metaphor. In Dixit, 3-6 players look at pictures—sorry, wonderfully delightful and imaginative images—to try to match them with clues given. At the beginning of the game, players are dealt a hand of six cards. The first player secretly chooses one from their hand and announces a clue. It can be a word, a sound, a song, a color—anything that can somehow be matched to the image on their card. The other players then secretly select the card from their hand which reminds them most of the clue given. The cards selected are all put face down in a pile, shuffled, and laid out randomly, face up in front of the players. The players then guess the card they think is the first player’s card. If everybody guesses the first player’s card, the players get points and the first player gets no points. If nobody guesses the first player’s cards, the players get points and the first player gets no points. If there is a mix of guesses, points are awarded to everyone, with bonuses. First player then rotates to the next player, and the process is repeated until someone reaches 30 points and becomes the winner.

In case that was unclear, the path to victory in Dixit is to be the most balanced clue giver. Provide too much information, and it’s too easy; you get no points as first player. Provide too little information and nobody will guess your clue; you get no points as first player. But hit that sweet spot right in the middle where some players guess your card and others don’t, and you’re on your way to victory. Poets potentially the best at offering this type of indirect meaning, it’s why I say Dixit hinges on the person’s like or dislike of indirect interplay and interaction between idea and image. A lot of games force players to think laterally, but Dixit forces 3D thinking.

I hinted earlier, and now I confirm: the art is what makes Dixit shine. Better shown than told, suffice at saying all of the imagery possesses mercurial imagination, wonderful details, yet enough ambiguity that it can be interpreted a variety of ways. Yes, the perfect art for the gameplay outlined above. Fantastical, natural, quizzical, existential—Dixit might be more art than game. (It should be noted, Remedios Varos, a surrealist whose art is loosely in common with Dixit’s, is my favorite painter.)

I have nothing negative to say about Dixit. Like Rory-Story Cubes, it activates the mind in a social yet inquisitive fashion that asks a person to build relationships between the representations of things. Rory-Story Cubes uses something more akin to symbolism, and Dixit more surreal paintings, but at heart they are simple ways of getting people to think along non-standard lines with the imagery they are given.

If it wasn’t clear, my family and I are in love with Dixit. While the concept is simple, I find it to be potentially the most developmental game we have for our children. Fueled by magnificently delightful imagery, it gets their brain gears turning in extremely positive, non-binary fashion. By ‘non-binary’, I’m referring to the fact the relationships needed to be built between clue and card are not mathematical or part of any structured sense of logic. Rather, they are the result of the variety of interconnections and perceptions we commonly hold as true in the broader experience of life. That may sound hyperbolic, but trust me. Play a game of Dixit and tell me your thoughts do not traverse both the broader highways and lesser used roads of existence far beyond most normal board game worlds. Like coconut, you will at least know in a very short amount of time whether you like it or not.