2–7 Players
Age 10+
20 minutes
Can you see patterns in the chaos?
The elements of nature—earth, water, fire, wind, and emptiness—are in chaos. Work together to bring these elements into order. As order is returned, new challenges are presented. Fortunately, the elements hide special powers to help you in your mission.
Game Contents:
- One deck of 62 element cards with 5 suits from 0–11 and two wild cards
- 25 element tokens with 5 tokens per suit
Additional Material:
Designer’s Notes
The genesis of this game was inspired from the card game Hanabi and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states complete information of a particle can never be known: you can measure the velocity of a particle or its position, but not both at the same time. Looking at a standard deck of playing cards, I wondered if you could design a game where you and the other players had a different set of information–for example, you could know the suit, but the other players could see its value. I created a deck of standard playing cards with the suit on one side of the cards and the value on the other, giving it the working title of HSNBRG NCRTNTY PLYNG CRDS.
I identified trick taking as the main mechanic in Earth Water Fire Wind Emptiness for two reasons. First, trick taking is a very intuitive mechanism for most players, giving an easier entrance to the game. I also found that trick taking melded well with the predictive element of the game where player predict the tricks they can make and then play the hands to make those tricks. The skill in playing the hands creates a wonderful tension in the players: as they get closer to successfully competing the round, the tension builds to see if the last tricks can actually be made.
Tokens become an important vehicle for the communication of information as well as a mechanism for the players to create a shared goal for the round. Over repeated plays, players start understanding the nuance of what the tokens signal. Tokens can show if a hand can be completed successfully and how the hand needs to be played. Players also develop their own communication strategies organically, for example, players use tokens to suggest trick suits to other players or point at tokens to help others in the group choose a trick to play.
The single-sided tokens creates two information levels in the game. The basic game allows the suits on the token to be visible to all players. This provides a lot of information for players to play the hand. Additionally, the tokens can be used face down, where the suit is hidden from players. With this option, tokens indicate a player can win a trick, but the other players do not know in which suit. Both these versions were play tested: less experienced players appreciated the suit information in the basic game and more advanced players enjoyed the additional challenge of the hidden token suit.
The theme of the current version was both for practical and evocative reasons. A standard four-suit deck does not have enough cards for seven eight-card hands and so I needed a theme to give more suits. I took the five elements of nature from Japanese philosophy to give the game five suits. Although this group of fundamental elements is Japanese, they are also recognized across many cultures to greater or lesser degrees. I felt the theme and use of Japanese characters gave a certain mystery to elevate the game. Play testers did not have problem using the Japanese characters as the iconography on either the cards or tokens, partly because of the simplicity of the characters themselves and partly because of the color coding and labels on the cards. Players soon learned the suits and could point to tokens and name them. However, this theme is arbitrary and could be changed.
