Something completely different, Dixit is less of a competitive game than a strange and beautiful exercise in creative thought .
Dixit consists of 84 large, high quality cards, each with an unique and somewhat abstract piece of art. The game is easier to play than to explain, but it works like this:
Players all have 6 cards. Each turn one player becomes the storyteller, the storyteller picks one of their cards and describes it briefly without showing the other players. The other players then pick one of their own cards that best match the storytellers description. All the chosen cards, including the storyteller's, are shuffled facedown and then arranged face-up on the table.
A selection of Dixit cards. The artwork is great.
With the cards revealed, players (except the storyteller) secretly choose which card they believe to be the one the storyteller originally described.
Players get points for picking the correct card, and a bonus point if another player selected the card that they added to the table. The storyteller gets points if at least one player selected their card, but if all players managed to get the right answer then the storyteller was obviously too specific in their description and gets nothing. Likewise, the storyteller is penalised if their description was so vague that nobody got the right answer.
The game encourages lots of interaction and conversation, as each player tries to describe their card using indirect and oblique references that they hope will go over the heads of most players but not all. The art is fantastic and the game is imaginative, easy, and fun.
Highly recommended.