# Three-card Hanabi — hidden hands and clues

- From: Hanabi (a famous cooperative card game)
- Players: 3 players
- Time: 6–8 min
- Made by: Antoine Bauza, published 2010 as Hanabi
- This version: A homemade cut-down: three colours, three players

Made with boardgameBuilder 0.14.4. To design from it, open boardgameBuilder and choose Open game: its blocks go on the canvas, and the feelings are left for you to pick.

In Hanabi you can see everyone's cards except your own. You hold your cards facing outward: your teammates see them, and you work out yours from their clues.

## What it shows a designer

Hidden hands turned inside out: you see everyone's cards except your own, so the team depends on a few limited clues. It shows how a limit on talking can become the whole game.

## What you need

- 12 small paper cards — write numbers 1–4 in three colours (red, blue, green). 4 cards per colour.
- a paper to track which cards have been played

## How to play

1. **Make the cards.** On 12 small paper cards, write red 1–4, blue 1–4, green 1–4.
2. **Deal sideways.** Shuffle. Deal 2 cards to each of the 3 players and put the rest face down as a draw pile. Hold your cards FACING OUTWARD: your teammates see them, you don't. Put 4 clue tokens (coins or paper bits) in the middle. The player who dealt goes first; play goes clockwise.
3. **Three actions.** On your turn do ONE of three things. (a) GIVE A CLUE: spend a clue token and tell one teammate about one colour or one number in their hand, pointing to every card of it ('these two are red', 'this one is a 3'). No clue when the tokens are gone. (b) PLAY a card. (c) DISCARD a card face up and take a clue token back.
4. **Play in order.** Cards are played in order, one row per colour: red 1, then red 2, red 3, red 4, and the same for blue and green. When you play a card, put it face up: if it is the next number in its colour it joins that row; if not, it is discarded and the team loses a life. You have three lives. After playing or discarding, draw a card if any are left.
5. **The end.** The game ends when the third life is lost, or when the draw pile is empty and everyone has had one more turn. Count the cards in the rows: that is the team's score. You can't say 'play your red 2'; that limit is the game.

## After playing, talk about

- When did clue-giving feel hard?
- When did your team click?
- Did the restriction feel like a problem or like the point?

## Its blocks

- Core mechanic: hand management
- Victory condition: shared objective
- Player interaction: fully cooperative
- Chance or skill: chance with mitigation
- Theme: abstract
- Information visibility: hidden hands
- Timing: take turns

## Saved state

boardgameBuilder reads this part back when the file is opened.

```json
{"mechanics": {"core-mechanic": ["hand-management"], "victory-condition": "shared-objective", "player-interaction": "fully-cooperative", "chance-skill": "chance-with-mitigation", "information": "hidden-hands", "theme": "abstract", "timing": ["take-turns"]}, "chosenFeelings": [], "previousMechanics": {}, "previousFeelings": [], "turnNumber": 0, "locked": false, "turnHistory": [], "answers": {}, "tests": {}}
```