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Over a decade ago, a little card game called Dixit was released. Featuring a deck of incredibly weird and beautifully illustrated cards, Dixit kind of revolutionised the tabletop industry – offering players a game where the ultimate goal wasn’t winning, but telling a story.
As revolutionary and charming as Dixit was, and is, it’s not especially fun to play. With no clear objective in place, playing Dixit feels rather pointless. Telling stories is fun and the cards are lovely to look at, but it gets very old, very quickly.
Since Dixit’s release, however, there have been several Dixit-esque board games published – including the beloved spooky co-op game Mysterium and the more recent Detective Club.
The brilliant thing about Detective Club is that it takes the very basic concept of Dixit – using illustrated cards to communicate themes and ideas – and turns it into a game that’s actually fun to play. Similarly to Dixit, players in Detective Club select and show illustrated cards to a group. Unlike Dixit, though, Detective Club pits players against each other in a test of intelligence and subterfuge.