Yesterday I played Hanabi and, while it was too late in the evening for me, I enjoyed it immensely until I collapsed mentally and started doing stupid mistakes.

Yeah, the game is hard, especially if you play with a group that doesn’t have the meta-gaming down pat.

But one of the players said something I thought very curious at the time: that Hanabi is the only purely cooperative game out there, that there is no other game that is as cooperative as Hanabi. I smiled, looked at the backsides of my cards, nodded and thought “no way, there are lots of co-ops out there”. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more convinced I’m becoming that he is right. (more…)