iDixit

Last week, my friend Jorge told me about this new game you can download for you phone, and it's now somewhat of an obsession. It's different from other games I've played. Jorge described it as being sort of like Apples to Apples, but it's more abstract. I love it. And I'm hoping that you'll download it! It's free until the end of July! What do you have to lose?

To describe the game, here's a blurb from the company's website:

Dixit is a game for 3 to 6 players. The concept is to confront your own way of thinking with the other players' by giving them a clue, neither too precise nor too vague.

Each player has 6 cards in his deck. The first player (the storyteller) selects one and gives a clue reflecting his perception of the picture. Each other player chooses a card they think matches best the given clue, then all cards are revealed. The goal of the game is to find out which card had been chosen by the storyteller, while avoiding the traps set by the others

So, when you start playing you're given a set of images like this:

If I was going first, I would be "The Storyteller." I would choose one of the pictures and then I would record a short blurb in my own voice giving a clue about the picture I chose. So, let's say I picked that first picture with all the food on the table. I might record something simple like, "The Feast." Or I could do something like, "The diet isn't going so well." My short recorded clue is then sent to the other players, who look through their images and choose one that would go with my clue. Actually, if there are very few players, they might be asked to choose 2 images instead of one. Then all the images - my original, and the ones the other players picked - are then presented to the players for votes to see if they can guess which one I was talking about. After my turn, the next player becomes "The Storyteller." And you just keep going until...I don't know how high the score goes. In almost every game I've played either a player bails out, which interrupts the game and ends it, or else my WiFi cuts out.

The game is best when there are several players - like 5 or 6. You need a minimum of 3. I've never played in a game with more than 3 players, and sometimes when I log in to join a game I have to wait for a while before enough people show up to play. But it's really fun once it gets going.

To download the app, look for iDixit (note the "i" at the beginning). Here's what the icon looks like:

Download today! All the cool kids are doing it!