LogFAQs > #898087349

19. Hanabi
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/98778/hanabi

Genre/mechanics: Cooperative, restricted communication, clue-giving, memory, hand management
Rules complexity: 3/10
Game length: 20-30 minutes
Player count: 2-5
Experience: 15+ plays with 3-6
First played: 2015

In Hanabi, you and your fellow players cooperate to build the best possible fireworks. Concretely, this means playing your numbered cards from 1 to 5 in each of five different colors. The twist: you can't see your own cards. It costs an action/token to give a hint to another player about the cards they hold, and you can only clue someone on everything of an attribute (number or color). The game ends shortly after the deck runs out.

Enjoyment - My first play of Hanabi was rough. New-ish to board games still, it was nice to be introduced to a game that not only was cooperative but also involved no cube-pushing and passive-aggressive resource denial. Except... well, that didn't mean there was no passive-aggressive interaction. Lots of bitter "Dude, what the fuck!" comments when people forgot the cards they were clued on, combined with eye-rolls and staredowns. Pain.

I stayed away from Hanabi for about two years after that until I saw it for $5 at Target in a slightly-larger-than-index-card box. Picked it up and I've played it a dozen times since. When you don't take it too seriously, it's just way more fun. (This is applicable to most strategy games, I find - though interestingly, there are some party games which are better when you do take them at least somewhat seriously.) Playing with a "no one is going to rake you across the coals for screwing up" attitude lets people relax, occasionally play better, and get more games in (so you can fix those mistakes from last time!) It's excellent as a game to play with non-gamers.

Design - Hanabi is clean and simple and it offers some really cool decisions and moments. It's astounding how satisfying it can be to make seemingly trivial moves because of how tight the memory system is. Playing cards (where you can blow a fuse) is often actually less stressful than discarding a card, or giving a hint that you don't know the other player will get. When a friend blind-discards and guesses right, it's awesome. When your hint that these cards are green is read correctly that they're to be discarded and not played, that's awesome. It's a great trust-building exercise.

Hanabi is supposed to be a silent game with poker faces for the most part, but playing in person, it never quite goes that way. It's cheating, but with no enemies, it tends to be amusing when people can't keep straight faces.

Future - I haven't played Hanabi a ton in recent months, if only because of opportunity cost. I'm always up for a game, but suggesting Hanabi as an opener tends to set a weird tone. It's excellent as an in-between/later game, though.

Bonus question - How much conversation do you like at a table? How competitive are you when it comes to cooperative games?

Hint for #18 - the rules don't say you have to be, but the silence in this game is almost memetic
---

yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness