Hanabi

Readiness

ready (confidence=1.00, rules=1.00, fun=1.00). BGG rank: 597; year: 2010; weight: 1.69; playtime: 25 min

Core Loop

A fully cooperative card game where players hold their cards facing outward — you cannot see your own cards, only others'. The shared goal is to play fireworks cards in sequence (1-2-3-4-5) for each of 5 colors. On your turn you take one of three actions: give a clue, play a card, or discard a card.

Giving a clue: point to one or more cards in another player's hand and tell them either "these cards are all [color]" or "these cards are all [number]." You must identify ALL cards matching that attribute — you cannot give a partial clue. Spend one of the 8 (or sometimes less) clue tokens from the shared supply.

Playing a card: choose a card from your hand and play it to the communal fireworks display. If it's the next number in its color's sequence, it's placed successfully. If not, it's a dud — discard it and lose one of 3 fuse tokens.

Discarding a card: remove one card from your hand and gain back one clue token. Draw a replacement card from the deck after any action.

The team relies on shared knowledge — players use clue logic to infer what their cards are, and must act on incomplete information.

Turn Structure and State

• Publisher/manual source is present and treated as the top rules authority.
• BGA tutorial is present; useful for exact turn flow and implementation gotchas.
• How-to-play transcript is present; useful for teach order and confusing steps.
• BGG description anchor: Hanabi—named for the Japanese word for "fireworks"—is a cooperative game in which players try to create the perfect fireworks show by placing the cards on the table in the right order. (In Japanese, hanabi is written as 花火; these are the ideograms flower and fire, respectively.) The card deck consists of five different colors of cards, numbered 1–5 in each color. For each color, the players [...]

Win Condition and Arc

Win by completing all 5 fireworks sequences (1-2-3-4-5 in each of 5 colors) for a perfect score of 25. Score equals how many cards were successfully played when the game ends (either deck exhausted + one final round, or all fuses blown = immediate loss with score 0 or current points). Lose immediately if 3 duds are played (3 fuses blown).

The arc builds around trust in clue interpretation. Early game is establishing a shared "protocol" for how clues mean what; late game is high-stakes plays with few clue tokens and known fuse pressure.

Decision Primitives

BGG mechanisms: Communication Limits, Cooperative Game, Hand Management, Memory, Ordering, Set Collection

Memory-derived primitives:

• Hidden information (can't see own cards)
• Cooperative communication with constrained clues
• Shared resource management (clue tokens, fuse tokens)
• Inference and deduction
• Hand management under uncertainty

v4 controlled primitives: communication_constraint, info_asymmetry_stable, semantic_overloading, forced_table_talk, attrition_clock

Top iOS archetype fits: coop 7.2, balatro 5.2, wordle 5.0.

Why It Is Fun

The core tension is exquisite: the game is hard enough that perfect scores feel like genuine achievements, but the constraint of only saying color or number (never "play this" or "don't play that") forces a creative compression of information. The joy comes from the team successfully inferring complex states from minimal signals.

Player-voice evidence:

• I really enjoy the silent mechanic of this game. It's a set-building co-op of deduction and memory. I'm a strict player, and if I could I would make everyone play in total silence, and I would love every tension filled second. BUT you...
• great coop, where everybody works together, without one person controlling the gameplan. Easy to understand, plays quick
• Quick, sleek, and fun filler. At its best, a rare co-op that can't be managed by an alpha gamer in the group, provided players don't start mistaking metagaming for logic.
• Really fun, and challenging deduction game. Each player does have to pay attention though, and be pretty switched on. If you want a game that makes you think, and work with everyone to win, this is for you.
• Really love the group dynamic that it creates. Fun strategy and tactics aswell. Also always striving to do better next game.

Friction and Failure Modes

• Treat Sonnet-memory edge rules as draft until confirmed by manual, BGA, or transcript.
• GitHub source is adjacent/tooling or false-positive; ignore for rules semantics.

Translation and Design Hooks

• Use this card to ask: which primitive carries the fun if theme/licensing is removed?
• For iOS, look for short-session compression, clear state visualization, and a digital-only twist.
• For new tabletop design, look for the tension source and decide whether to preserve or invert it.

Edge Rules and Gotchas

• Clues must be truthful and complete — you cannot point to only some cards of the matching attribute; you must indicate all matching cards even if revealing too much
• When the deck runs out, each player gets exactly one more turn (including the player who drew the last card), then the game ends and score is tallied
• If a 5 is successfully played in any color, you immediately gain 1 clue token back as a bonus
• Multicolor variant adds a sixth color (rainbow) that matches every color clue, dramatically increasing difficulty
• The "good hand" convention: experienced players often use the position of cards in hand as implicit meta-information (leftmost = oldest, newest cards may be unclued but playable soon)
• Discarding a card you still need permanently reduces max possible score; careful tracking of discards is essential

Sources Used

[
  {
    "kind": "pdf",
    "path": "data/rulebooks/98778.pdf",
    "quality": 1.0,
    "note": "BGG file 86970 (English from French translation, 1 page)"
  },
  {
    "kind": "llm_memory",
    "path": "data/llm_memory_sonnet/98778.md",
    "quality": 0.9,
    "note": "sonnet-self-rated-9"
  },
  {
    "kind": "bga_tutorial",
    "path": "data/bga_tutorials/98778.md",
    "quality": 0.85,
    "note": "BGA implementation rules summary"
  },
  {
    "kind": "bgg_comments",
    "path": "data/bgg_comments/98778.txt",
    "quality": 0.75,
    "note": "positive/player-voice sample"
  },
  {
    "kind": "youtube_transcript",
    "path": "data/youtube_transcripts/98778.txt",
    "quality": 0.7,
    "note": "how-to-play transcript"
  },
  {
    "kind": "wikipedia",
    "path": "data/wikipedia/98778.md",
    "quality": 0.55,
    "note": "board-game-suffix"
  },
  {
    "kind": "github_code",
    "path": "data/code_implementations/98778.md",
    "quality": 0.15,
    "note": "GitHub match is adjacent/tooling, not rules code"
  }
]