Fireworks
Cooperative card game: build a fireworks display together!
How to Play
Goal
Together, build fireworks in 5 colors from 1 to 5. The higher the total score, the better!
Key rule
You can see other players' cards but NOT your own!
Give a hint
Tell a teammate about a color or value in their hand. Costs 1 hint token.
Play a card
Play a card from your hand. If it fits the firework, it's added. If not, you lose a fuse token!
Discard
Discard a card to regain a hint token.
Game end
The game ends with a perfect firework (25 points), when all fuse tokens are lost, or when the deck runs out (each player gets one more turn).
Strategy & tips
A hint says more than it names. Showing a player their ones tells them not only which cards are ones, but also that you considered this hint worth giving — so one of them is playable now. That second layer is the real heart of the game.
Agree a shared language before you start. For example: a hint always points at the newest affected card, and that card is playable. Without such conventions half the information evaporates; with them, guessing becomes craft.
Hints are scarce and discarding creates them. When no hint tokens remain, someone must discard. Better to throw away something obviously useless early than to sacrifice an unknown card under duress later.
Variants
Rainbow suit
A sixth colour counts as a wild for every colour hint. Considerably harder, because colour hints become ambiguous.
No conventions
No hint convention may be agreed beforehand. The game becomes pure reading of intentions.
Two players
Larger hands and fewer mistakes allowed. Tactically denser, because you can keep track of everything.
How it works
1. Create a game
Click "Create Game" and receive a 6-digit code.
2. Share the code
Share the code with your friends – via WhatsApp, Telegram, or just tell them.
3. Play instantly
Your friends enter the code and you start playing immediately. No login required!
Origin
The game was published in 2010 by Antoine Bauza and won the Spiel des Jahres critics' award in 2013 — the first purely cooperative game ever to do so. The Japanese title means fireworks, which is why the colour rows are read as rising displays.
In computer science it serves as a benchmark for cooperation under incomplete information: unlike chess or Go, the task is not to beat an opponent but to build a shared model with severely limited communication.
Frequently asked questions
Can I see my own cards?
No — you see everyone else's cards but never your own. The entire game grows out of that.
What happens on a mistake?
Playing a card that does not fit costs the group one of three fuse tokens. After the third the game ends immediately.
Do we play against each other?
No, everyone plays together against the game. A single shared score of at most 25 counts at the end.
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