Hexentanz

Hexentanz (German for "Witches' Dance") is a German memory board game designed by Björn Hölle, in which players race hidden-color pieces around the Blocksberg on Walpurgis Night while trying to remember which of the identical witch figures are their own. The game was placed on the recommendation list (Auswahlliste) for the Spiel des Jahres 1989, the annual award given by a jury of German game critics.¹

Concept and components

The game is a variant of Pachisi, the Indian race-game family that also produced the German classic Mensch ärgere dich nicht. The Spiel des Jahres jury described the theme directly: on Walpurgis Night the witches dance back and forth on the Blocksberg, and each player tries to dice their own witches over a circular course to the goal first.¹

The distinguishing feature is concealment. Every piece is a black cone shaped like a witch's hat, and the color appears only on the underside or on an inserted colored head. A player may inspect that color only when moving one of their own pieces into their goal, or by rolling a 6, which offers the choice of moving a piece or secretly looking under any one hat.⁴ Because any player may move any piece, the game becomes a running memory exercise: everyone must track which hats belong to whom as they are shuffled around the board.⁴

Board and movement

The playing field consists of 36 spaces apart from start and goal areas. A player whose pieces have not yet left the start house may roll up to three times per turn while waiting for a 6.⁴

There is no capturing in the Pachisi sense. When a piece lands on an occupied space, the piece already there moves 7 spaces backward, and its color is shown to all players first; if that landing space is also occupied, it moves another 7 spaces back, and so on until it finds a free field.⁴ When a player dances a piece into their own goal, the piece is turned over for everyone to see; if the color does not match, the piece goes directly into the goal house of the player whose color it actually is, a mistake reviewers describe as scoring an own goal for a rival.^{4 • 2}

Reception and variants

German review sites have treated the game as a light but demanding family game. H@LL9000 readers rated it 3.9 of 6 across 8 ratings, with the site's own reviewers at 3.5 of 6, and its tags include bluffing, deduction, memory, and dice movement.² A professional test at Spiele-Offensive scored the standard game 4 of 6 and the commonly played Profi variant 5 of 6, noting that the expert version turns the memory load into a serious concentration test in which leaving the table mid-game is effectively losing.⁵ Reviewers also observe that with average memory and more than three players the tracking quickly dissolves into chaos, and that games are often won by players whose pieces others accidentally carried home.²

The game has traveled internationally. An English edition appeared under the title Magic Dance, and fan translations of the German rules circulate on BoardGameGeek; a Japanese edition, 魔女の踊り, was released by Mebius Games with Ravensburger.^{6 • 7} The current Ravensburger edition (product 26425) sells for €34.99 and is marketed as a memory game for ages 8 to 99.³

References

1. 1989 Archive, Spiel des Jahres
2. H@LL9000 Rezension: Hexentanz
3. Hexentanz, Ravensburger product page
4. Hexentanz Spielanleitung, Spielregeln.de
5. Profi-Testbericht für Hexentanz, Spiele-Offensive
6. Magic Dance | Board Game, BoardGameGeek
7. 魔女の踊り (Hexentanz), 駿河屋

Topic: Encyclopedia › Sports, games, and recreation › Board, card, and puzzle games › Board games › Modern designer board games › Children's, family, and gateway games

Initially written Oct 20, 2026 · Edited: Oct 25, 2026

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