Is Hanabi a dud, or a beautiful firework? – Review

hanabi feature

Hanabi won the 2013 Spiel des Jahres Award, so it’s kind of a big deal. It’s cheap, it’s small, it’s portable, and it offers gameplay we haven’t seen before. A card game where you can see everyone else’s hands except your own. How does that work?

Well, it starts with everyone sitting around the table trying to clumsily put together a fireworks show. Clumsily, because you’re not allowed to communicate, at least not overtly. Instead, on your turn, you can offer them clues about the cards in other people’s hands.

You do this by referencing the number of coloured cards in their hand. For example, you have four blue cards and then point to them. Or do something similar with the number on their cards, i.e. you have two fives, and then point to them. What you can’t do is identify individual cards, such as pointing at one card and saying that it’s a red three.

The challenge of Hanabi is that your group only has a limited number of clues. You can get more by discarding cards, but you’ll never get enough to provide you with perfect information about the cards you’re holding.

Now that you know the rules, your goal is to create five different piles of cards ordered from 1 to 5. Place a card in the wrong pile, or in the incorrect order, and you have to take a fuse token.

Three of these and BOOM!

The fireworks go off, and the game ends prematurely.

At that point, or when you successfully complete the piles, you calculate your score, write it down, and try to beat it in the next game.

The Hanabi box and rule book, shows just how small of board game it is.
Did I mention it’s portable?

A game of non-verbal systems

Hanabi starts strong with everyone looking around the table sheepishly wondering how to begin. From there, it becomes flexible, depending on how strict you are with the no-talking rule. It can be a light filler, where you use non-verbal communication or monkey grunts to help out others. Or if playing to the letter of the law, it can be an absolute brain burner.

My group fell somewhere between these two extremes. Where we created our own system of clues within the boundaries of rules. For example, we would point to cards in the order that they should be played.

While we didn’t go much further in developing this system, people have gone Rain Man on Hanabi. Creating systems within systems chasing that perfect score.

However, no matter how you play, there’s still a lot of logic to be formed and tough decisions to be made. Beyond what’s in your hand, timing when to give a clue and discard is also crucial to getting a high score.

Hanabi is such a fascinating board game because it gives you so much information throughout the game. You can see so many cards and can figure out what’s in play. Except, the small bit of information withheld is also the most important to you.

As such, it gets crazy intense sometimes. While it you usually start with a lot of information and clues about your hand, as the game goes on this information dries up. Leading you, and everyone else, to take on riskier moves, with little to no information. This creates some super fun moments where everyone groans, or cheers depending on the result.

Shows the six suits of cards: red, white, green, blue, yellow, and rainbow. You can also see the four fuse tokens, and the eight hint tokens.
All of the components laid out to bear

It’s hard not to cheat in Hanabi

The worst thing about Hanabi is whenever I pull it out to play, my dog starts whimpering and hiding under the couch. I joke, of course, as the fireworks theme of this game would fall off with a stiff breeze.

But the truly worst thing about Hanabi is the players.

There comes a point in every game of Hanabi when the team gets backed against the wall and no-communication becomes a guideline rather than a rule. No matter how many groups I played this game with, they all had a breaking point.

While this makes for a good psychological experiment, it also sucks all the tension and fun out of the logic puzzle. Now, this may be a player problem, but The Crew: Mission Deep Sea has similar rules around talking. Yet, players seem to respect it a lot more.

While we’re at it, I also hate Hanabi’s soft win condition. In the end, you get a high score and then it’s up to you to keep track of it, score it, and then beat it. My preference is for games to give me a challenge, and then allow me to beat it over several games. Having a soft target means you always win – it’s just by how much. This gets boring after a few plays.

Between this weak endgame and the impossible-to-police no-communication rule, Hanabi was a dud. Even though the design is brilliant, it didn’t land with any of the groups I played it with.

Designer: Antoine Bauza

Publisher: R&R Games

See how Hanabi compares to all of the other board games I’ve reviewed.

Hanabi Cover
  • The game of cooperative silence, while the fireworks boom!
  • Find out your groups secret language
  • Cheap as chips, low investment to find out if its for you

4 thoughts on “Is Hanabi a dud, or a beautiful firework? – Review

  1. Just recently got this and I’ve enjoyed it so far. Like you said, the player-policing kinda works against the game since its a co-op so collusion helps everyone technically. Easy to play, but might get worn out after several plays with the same group.

  2. I have the Deluxe edition of Hanabi and LOVE it. It solves that awkward holding-the-cards-while-trying-not-to-look-at-them thing because it uses beautiful tiles that stand up on their own. The light theme doesn’t bother me for abstract strategy games so much.

  3. Price point-wise, Beyond Baker Street is approximately twice as much as Hanabi. But aside from cards, you get an actual board, wooden markers, and a whole deck of “character” cards that allow for some clever game-enhancing abilities. For what you get – value-wise – I’d say it’s comparable to Hanabi!

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