Unlike many card and board games, the strategy and competitive component in Dixit is almost nonexistent. In fact, the main focus of the game is in being creative and original and in trying to figure out how the other players connect images, ideas and concepts in their minds: this makes the game much more interesting to play with people that you know well or are in the process of getting close with.

For many people, this is the main attraction of this game. The cards are simply beautifully illustrated and going through the deck of cards, even if not playing, is a pleasure. The french illustrator Marie Cardouat deserves all the credit for her work creating these dream-like works of art.

You can be as creative as you want when playing this game, but it limits that creativity so that it's not impossible for others to guess and win the game, but also, you need some imagination to play this in order to win too.

The game mechanics are pretty straightforward and easy to understand, even to young children and people who usually don't play board games and the like. This saves everyone the headache of spending half an hour listening to someone explain the rules and still not understanding exactly what's going on when you actually start playing. Experienced players and newbies are practically on the same level when playing a game of Dixit.

The basics are easy - the "storyteller" makes up a sentence from one of the cards in hand, each player gives a card that best matches that sentence to the storyteller, and the storyteller shuffles all of the cards and places them face-up. After this the players have to guess which card was the storyteller's. Points are given based on the outcome - if nobody or everybody guessed the card correctly, all players except for the storyteller get 2 points. Otherwise the storyteller and whoever chose the right card score 3. The game ends either when the deck is empty or when a player reaches 30 points.