Week 8

The group I was with was given the card game Hanabi. The game is simply about building fireworks. In the game, each player is given a certain number of cards depending on the group size, in our case four. Each player does not look at their own cards, but at the other players’ cards as they hold them backwards. Each round, every player can choose to either: 

1. Give information about another player’s cards

2. Discard a card

3. Play a card

A firework is made when the players have been able to work together to play cards in order from one to five of the same color. When the deck runs out, the players then count up the points of their fireworks to see how pleased a theoretical audience would be with the fireworks display. The deck is comprised of numbered cards one through five. Each number is also colored one of five colors. Fireworks must be of the same color, and you cannot have more than one completed firework of any given color. The play space is relatively small and only requires enough room to place the cards on top of each other. 

One interesting design concept that I enjoyed out of Hanabi was that players did not look at their own cards. This being brought up by Altice. 

“Often subversions of platform characteristics, like reversing a card’s concealment, yield the most interesting design results.” (Altice, 38)

In some instances, this made me feel like I had less information than I normally do with other card games, such as Spades, even though I was able to see all other players’ cards. I feel that this design is very interesting and  provided a unique spin on how information is given in the game. One aspect of the game that I think I clear to see in the reading is the ordinality of it. 

“most card games from the fourteenth through twentieth centuries rely on ordinality as their base mechanic, using a card’s printed value or symbol to form a series or group of related cards.” (Altice, 42)

Hanadi is not exception to this. The game relies on cards be grouped by number and color in order to win and get points. 

In the Watch It Played playlist, I chose to look at Hues and Cues, as I thought it would be interesting since I am color-blind. In Hues and Cues, a player who has the most colorful clothes plays as the “cue giver” for the first round. The cue giver draws a card that as 4 different colors on it and they select one. The cue giver then selects one color and gives a hint as to what color it is. The closer a player gets, the more points they get. Likewise, the more players that are close, the more points the cue giver obtains. One main aspect of the cards used in this game is their use to portray information to the cue giver while hiding it from all other players.

“In most games, the card’s back—decorated with a uniform pattern to make all cards appear identical—faces one’s opponent(s) while the front displays information meant to be hidden from other players” (Altice, 38)

This is very similar to other card games, but still slightly different in the way that no other player but the cue giver gets to look at a card. One aspect of the cards that stood out to me was how, even thought they are only a card, they still, in some ways, reflect the game board. The colors shown on each card have the coordinates of that specific hue on it. In this way, the card works as a representation of the board. Although this game is simple in its board design, the board still takes up quite a bit of room and displays a lot of information. 

“So both sports and board games excel at games of territorial capture and control, spatial mastery, mapping, and traversal” (Altice, 48)

The game has each color coordinated to an x and a y spot on the board, this easily reflects the mapping that a board has, even if it is not complex.