Review – Dixit: Kids

The Head Mailrabbit is having a birthday, but she’s a bit of a procrastinator, so the invites haven’t been sent out yet! Give your team of Trainee Mailbunnies the best clues for your favorite guests so you can have as big a party as possible before the day of the party arrives! So, should you invite your young friends to play this one, or should they have stayed home? 

If you’re unfamiliar with the world of Dixit, check out our review of the original. 

Review 

 You can begin the game on Monday or Wednesday (allowing for less time), so there’s varying difficulty. Players will take turns being the Head Mailrabbit and inviting guests, and everyone will be using 1 of the 3 cards in their hands to help guess the right invitation. The Head Mailrabbit’s birthday party is on Sunday, so players will have until then to invite as many of the 8 potential guests as possible.

When you’re the Head Mailrabbit, you’ll select 1 of the 2 rabbit guests to send your invitation to. Select your invitation card from your hand and place it facedown in front of you. All the other players will select an invitation for the other guest, the one you didn’t invite, and set their invite cards facedown. You’ll mix up all the invite cards, flip them over, and when everyone is ready, they’ll point to the card they think you chose to invite your guest. If 2 or more players guessed correctly, open up the rabbit burrow and place the 2 rabbits at the party table! If not, then play passes to the person on your left. 

The open-burrow mechanic is really fun, especially for kids–a fitting reward for guessing the Head Mailrabbit’s invitation! The hand size of 3 is perfect for younger kids to help minimize choices, but sometimes, you just don’t have the cards you’d like. This is fine, and you can usually find some outlandish card to throw that in no way relates to either of the guests (until someone says, “well that little gingerbread man in the corner does look pretty happy”). The core of Dixit’s exciting, picture/emotion guessing game is retained splendidly in a much simpler version. 

We played with adults and my two oldest daughters (7 and 5), and while there were definitely head-scratching card plays, they were able to play decently well, with us inviting 6 of the 8 guests to the party on our first playthrough, which we began on Monday. It was a joy watching them point to the correct card and open the burrow, and even to explain why they chose the wrong card (kids’ minds are whacky sometimes). 

The components are adorable. You can open up the box to find a couple of rabbit hole homes with tables, pictures, etc. on the walls. Totally unnecessary, but completely adorable. The art is fantastic too, though some cards certainly have a lot more going on than others. My kids tended to fixate on 1 or 2 components of each card, rather than taking the whole card in, so I think it’s a good decision for most of the cards to only have a few things going on. 

While a tad tricky to explain at first, Dixit Kids provides a simpler Dixit game for younger players and families. We’ve enjoyed it a lot, and it’s been a wonderful opportunity to discuss the rabbits’ emotions and for everyone to explain their reasoning behind why they picked which card for what. I’m not totally sure this is the best version of a kids’ Dixit, I certainly couldn’t think of a better one. We’ll be enjoying this one for quite a while.  

Libbuled kindly provided a review copy.