Card games have always had a certain mystique about them. Whether you’re thinking of famous movie scenes (Casino Royale springs to mind) or just remembering late-night poker sessions at a friend’s place, It’s fascinating to be in possession of information that nobody else knows (which is why phrases such as ‘what’s on the cards’ or ‘playing your cards close to your chest’ have become part of the English language). And that brings us to Hanabi, a clever little card game that we’ll be talking about today.
Hanabi, which is Japanese for ‘firework’, is a cooperative game in which you and up to four other players work together in order to make the best fireworks display. You have cards numbered 1 to 5 in five colours — blue, green, yellow, red and white — and all you have to do is play cards from your hand in sequence (a red 3 only after a red 1 and 2 have been played, for example) until you have a full set for each colour on the table. Sounds simple, right? Here’s the twist — you don’t actually know which cards you’re holding.
That’s right, Hanabi requires you to hold your cards facing outward, so that you know what everybody else has in their hand of cards but you don’t have a clue what’s in your own. With one single masterful stroke, this inverts those card game conventions I mentioned earlier and results in everybody around the table looking less like suave high-rollers and more like blindfolded people stumbling around a very dark room — filled with gunpowder.
So, to recap — you can see everybody else’s cards, but you can’t see your own. You’re not allowed to tell them what they’ve got but you can spend one of your limited clue tokens to give somebody a single piece of information about their cards. Once you burn through your clues, however, the only way to get them back is to discard a card, removing it from the game and potentially preventing you from progressing in a given colour.
So you’ve got to stretch those clues and make them go a long, long way — because you can’t say everything you want to, you’ll be forced to say what you can and hope and pray that your friend can read between the lines. You know exactly how many cards of each type there are in the deck, so the longer the game goes on, the more info will be available to you. Can you last that long, though? That’s entirely up to you.
If you like the sound of... A co-op game that involves deduction and reasoning A card game that’s unlike any other card game You’re blind to your own cards and you can’t speak That moment when a friend puts together fragments from multiple clues correctly & you want to punch the air That moment when you can’t help swearing at your friends who can’t remember clues you JUST GAVE THEM A game that’ll make you feel clueless and like a genius in equal measure ...you should give Hanabi a try! |
Hanabi is one of my go-to examples when I’m talking to people about the sheer variety and cleverness of modern boardgames. When you start explaining it, people will seem vaguely nonplussed — what’s the fuss about?
Watching their eyes light up once you show them the twist is one of the best things about Hanabi, but the fun doesn’t stop there. It’s a great co-op game — you’ve always got interesting decisions to make, and there’s genuine tension around the table at times. Enough talking, go check it out!
| It’s one of the best co-op games available! When it’s all of you as a team vs the game, it’s a lot more enjoyable. It’s aggravating when someone doesn’t get your clues or forgets the order of their cards is nothing compared to that moment when someone takes a complete guess and gets it right by fluke - you can’t help but wonder how such a small box can contain so much fun! |
(The writer is a gamer, book lover and all-around Renaissance man)
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