A complete guide to the co-op where you can't see your own cards: clues, playing cards in order, tokens and strikes, the goal of 25 fireworks, muta.pro controls and team tactics.
Hanabi is a co-op: the team plays not against each other but against the game itself. Together you build five fireworks stacks — one for each of the five colours (red, yellow, green, blue, white) — laying down the numbers from 1 to 5 in strict order. If every stack is completed up to the five, 25 fireworks soar into the sky — a perfect show. On muta.pro you play as a team of three with the bots Alice and Boris, and the line "Launched into the sky: X of 25 fireworks" shows the shared score.
The deck has 50 cards: five colours and the numbers 1–5. Each player gets a hand of 5 cards but holds them facing away from themselves — you can't see your own cards, yet you see your teammates' hands perfectly. That's exactly why the only way to help yourself is through others' clues.
The team has shared resources: 💡 clue tokens (maximum 8) and ⚡ strikes — a mistake counter, and three strikes mean failure. The "Team resources" panel on the left shows the token supply (6/8, for example), the number of strikes and how many cards are still left in the deck.
You hold your 5 cards facing away from you and don't know what they are. Your teammates' hands are open to you — and yours is open to them. All information about your own hand comes only through clues.
On your turn you can give a teammate a clue. Click one of their cards and choose a trait — a colour ("🟢 Green" and so on) OR a number ("№ 3"). All of their cards with that trait light up. A clue costs −1 token 💡. The "✕ Cancel" button clears your selection.
Instead of a clue, choose one of your face-down cards (it lights up) and press "🎆 Play selected". If the card continues the stack of its colour in order — that is, one higher than the top — the firework grows. If not, the team takes a strike ⚡.
The third option on your turn: choose one of your cards and press "🗑 Discard selected". A discard returns one clue token 💡 to the team. You can't discard if you already have the maximum — 8 tokens.
Tokens are fuel for clues: save them and refill them with discards. Strikes are the price of mistakes: on the third strike the game is lost, so play a card only when you're sure.
When the last card is drawn from the deck, one more round is played: each player gets one final turn, after which the result is tallied.
The result is the sum of the top cards of all five stacks, that is, the number of fireworks launched out of 25. A full win means all five colours completed up to the five: 25 points and the message "Perfect! The sky's ablaze 🎆". Defeat comes on the third strike — "Fireworks ruined — three strikes ⚡". The game also ends when the deck is exhausted (after the last round of turns), and then the team counts how many fireworks it managed to launch. The higher the score "X of 25", the better the display turned out.
There are only 8 tokens. A single clue by colour or number often marks several cards at once — choose the one that tells your teammate the most.
If a card was pointed out to you, it's usually a signal that "it can be played" or "it's worth keeping". Think about why your teammate spent a token right now.
Get rid of cards that are definitely no longer needed: duplicates of low numbers, or a colour whose stack is complete. That way you get a token back without risk.
There's only one five of each colour in the deck — lose it and the colour can never be completed. Be careful with the ones early in the game too.
In Hanabi a clue is not just a literal fact ("here are your greens") but a hint at an action. An experienced team agrees on the meaning in advance: a fresh clue almost always means "play this card right now". Learn to think not "what was I told" but "why did my teammate spend a token on this particular card". Here you can't see your own cards at all, so every clue is a rare channel of communication and it can't be wasted.
Agreements about the meaning of clues are called conventions. Even the simple rule "a fresh clue = play" sharply raises the result, because your teammate doesn't have to guess why they were approached.
You were shown one red card while the red stack is empty — it's almost certainly a red one, and it can be played.
A clue just given usually means "play". If the card only needed keeping, your teammate would have stayed silent and spent the token later.
Your teammate knows both your hand and the shared table. Pointing at a card, they've already worked out that it's unambiguous for you — trust that calculation.
A number clue is given when order matters (for example, a playable one); a colour clue when it's important not to discard the last needed card. The choice of trait carries meaning in itself.
Winning depends not on luck but on discipline with resources. You have only 8 tokens and a margin of just 2 mistakes — the third strike ends the game. A good team keeps its tokens in the middle range: neither hoarding them uselessly (clues sit idle) nor spending them down to zero (nothing left to warn of danger).
Dividing roles helps too: while the stacks are empty it's more useful to hand out clues on ones and open the start for every colour, and closer to the finish — to guard key cards and precisely bring stacks up to the fives. Keep in mind which numbers have already been played for each colour.
The stack grows strictly in order 1→2→3→4→5; there's only one five of each colour in the deck, and it can't be lost.
There's one five of each colour and two of each two. Until the five is out, the whole colour is at risk — guard the cards leading up to it.
Dropping the counter to 0 is dangerous: if a teammate ends up with a risky card, you'll have nothing to warn them with. Keep at least one token in reserve.
Don't lay down cards blindly when there are unused clues. One clarified move is often worth more than two risky ones.
A discard is not a defeat but the only way to get a token back without risking a strike. The secret of strong play is knowing which card is already useless and getting rid of exactly that one. The worst thing is discarding blindly a card you know nothing about: the very last five might be under it.
It helps to mentally split your hand into three groups: obviously playable (there was a fresh clue about them), valuable to keep (the last copies of needed numbers) and junk (duplicates and dead colours). You should always discard from the third group.
A second copy of an already-played two is a safe discard: the colour is complete, the duplicate isn't needed.
A card of a colour whose stack is already completed up to the five is useless. Discard those first — it's a clean token return.
There are three ones in the deck and two twos. If a copy of a number has already been played, the spare can safely go to the discard pile.
When there are no tokens and no obvious move, discarding the least valuable card is often better than a blind play risking the third strike.
Most lost games are not bad luck but predictable slip-ups: extra risk at the end, a forgotten last five, a mute round with no clues. Let's break down what most often ruins the show, so you can avoid it.