Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Dixit Journey from Asmodee


The eyes are the window to the soul. Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye. The eye sees what it brings the power to see. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The eye is the notebook of the poet. If all these things can be said about the eye, what can be said about the things the eye sees? In Dixit Journey, a picture is worth anywhere from 1 to 1000 words.

Dixit Journey employs your sense of wonderment and imagination to create a fantastic voyage through art and its interpretation. You get a hand of 6 cards that have gorgeous art on them. Each piece of art is open to a vast amount of clues if your imagination is strong enough. Look at some of these cards and you'll understand what I mean. The clue for these three cards was "Heritage".



Which card do you think is mine - the one I gave the clue for? For fun, leave your guess in the Comments section. I will come back in a week or two and score everyone's guesses.

Dixit Journey comes with a deck of cards featuring some truly stunning artwork. The game comes with color-coded voting chits and Rabbit meeples (for tracking your score) that travel along a folding scoreboard that explains scoring and has a score tracker. The cards are tarot sized to give some extra room for the great artwork. It seems I actually have a reprint copy of the game, the original print-run had some low quality pawns. The rabbit meeples are a really nice touch.

Here's a look at all the components to the game
Dixit Journey employs a unique mechanic. A single player is designated as the "Active Player", who begins each round by choosing one of the six cards in their hand and giving a clue. The card is played face down, and the other players then play a card face down from their hand that matches that clue to the best of their ability. Then all the cards get shuffled up and laid out next to the numbers on the scoring track. The next phase of the turn is the voting. Players use their voting chits to guess which card is the active player's (who doesn't get a vote). Once all the votes have been cast, they're revealed and the active player points out the winning card. In the final phase you score up the votes. Scoring is a bit complicated so I will cover that further down. You win the game by first player to score a total of 30 points.

I just love the art. It truly is fantastic. I also love the concept of "do you see what I see". After enough times playing Dixit with someone, you will understand them better. No two people look at a single piece of art and see it in the same way, which makes an art critic out of all of us. This game is a must-have for any family that plays board games together.

With too few players it seems too easy to guess the active player. With too many players the game slows way down. There is a sweet spot at 4-5 players. I've read other reviews where they have adapted the game to play 7+ players and I'm interested in trying it. But going through, choosing your art, then doing the secret bidding makes me worried that an overpopulated table would ruin the game.

Dixit is one of the few games my girlfriend will actually play. This is huge. You may have someone in your life that doesn't like board games. If you do, I am sorry. The solution is Dixit Journey. Go get this game. It's easy to teach, and the art is magnificent. The other thing about this game is there are 3-4 other versions and they all wrap in together. So if you feel like you are seeing the same art too often pick up the original Dixit, or Dixit Odyssey and mix the cards together. It will keep the game fresh for many game nights to come.

To see Wil Wheaton explain the game go HERE

A review from a Board Game Geek Users HERE

Matthew Ryan Robinson is an indie game designer and runs Broken Prism Games. He posts on three other blogs brokenprismgames.com, solventcage.wordpress.com, and 360to180.com. You can meet him at Dallas Gaming Marathon on Thursdays or Open Stage on Mondays {Youtube Search: Open Stage Penguin}.

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