Hanabi
Hold your cards facing away from yourself, give limited clues and coordinate a perfect fireworks display using information everyone can see except you.
Hold your hand facing outward so the other players can see your cards while you cannot.
On a turn, give a legal clue, play a card into the shared fireworks display or discard to recover a clue token. The team succeeds by building each color in ascending order.
Why We Love It
Hanabi inverts normal card-game information: everyone can see your cards except you. The puzzle comes from giving clues that are useful now while also preserving enough information tokens for later turns.
About Hanabi
Hold your hand facing outward so the other players can see your cards while you cannot.
On a turn, give a legal clue, play a card into the shared fireworks display or discard to recover a clue token. The team succeeds by building each color in ascending order.
Game at a Glance
Read Other Hands
Everyone sees everyone else’s cards but not their own.
Give Limited Clues
Use scarce information tokens to identify colors or numbers.
Play in Order
Each firework must be built upward from one to five.
Discard Carefully
Recover clue capacity without throwing away a card the team still needs.
What is Hanabi?
Hanabi is Antoine Bauza’s cooperative card game for 2–5 players. R&R Games lists a 30-minute play time and age 8+.
The signature twist is that players hold their cards facing outward, so everyone can see your hand except you.
How the game works
On your turn, you may give a legal clue about color or number, play a card, or discard a card to recover a clue token. The team tries to build five fireworks in ascending order.
Clues are limited, incorrect plays consume fuse tokens and discarded cards can permanently remove needed values.
The decisions that define it
Good clues often communicate more than their literal information. Timing, which cards are touched and what you choose not to mention can all help teammates infer priorities.
The group must also decide when uncertainty is acceptable and when spending another clue is safer than risking a misplay.
Who is it for?
Choose Hanabi if you want cooperative deduction with compact rules, shared memory and communication constraints.
Choose Bomb Busters for mission progression or Just One for a lighter party-game structure.
Learn Hanabi in depth
Publisher sources & scope
Checked September 16, 2026. This hub covers the standard Hanabi card game.