This week I played a game called Hanabi. It’s a cooperative card game where there are 6 colors of cards, with each card having a value between 1-5 that represent fireworks. There are three 1’s of each color, two 2-4’s of each color, and one 5 of each color. The goal of the game is to built your firework sequence by placing the card’s of each color in order of 1-5. A twist to the game is that each player cannot see the cards that they have, they must hold them facing away from themselves. On each turn a player has 3 things they can do. First they have the opportunity to play a card from their hand. The other thing they can do is give a hint to one of the other players about their hand, citing that “these two cards have a value of 3” or “these three cards are blue.” When giving a hint, you must take a blue hint chip from the middle and turn it over. Once all these chips are turned over, you cannot give any more hints. Third, a player can discard a card from their hand, which allows them to take a hint chip and put it back on the blue side.

Within this game, the most difficult part is very obvious, and it’s that you cannot see what cards you have in your hand. This is a unique twist that I’ve never before seen in a card or tabletop game. Along with this, it is very important to give solid and complete clues to your teammates, so that they know what cards are in their hand and what they should be doing. My group played this game twice, and I think the hardest part the first time was understanding why other players were giving certain clues. There is supposed to be zero table talk and help beyond the clues, so when someone says, “these two cards have a value of 2,” you need to decide how you want to interpret that information. Are all of the 2’s already played so I should discard or is there something else? I think we struggled with that a few times the first game, which was understandable.

As for leadership within this game, it’s really important to have a group leadership, because one person cannot lead everyone in a game like this. This game relies a lot on trusting your teammates and making sure that they give you clues and that you understand their reasoning for the clues. It’s very important for a leader to be trusted by their group, because if you don’t trust what they say, the entire group can fail. After my group’s first game, I made sure to talk before starting our next game and went through some reasons why people might give the hints they do. I think this gave people a better mindset going into the game, which was really beneficial to our group. We improved our score 4 points between the two rounds.

I think that my sister would be really good at a game like Hanabi. She’s an intelligent person who has a strong ability to understand other people. I think that’s important, because she would be able to comprehend her teammates clues and why they were giving them. This is a game I would really love to play with her.