The Secret Flower

About this board game

The Secret Flower is a cooperative 16-card deduction micro-game for 2–5 players, with an approximate play time of 20 minutes. Players must use limited communication to determine the identity of one hidden card: the Secret Flower.

Released as a promotional game during the Asian Board Games Festival (ABGF) 2023 in Singapore, the game features flowers from the festival’s participating countries. Its compact format creates a focused challenge built around questions, partial information, and logical deduction.

To begin, one card is set aside face down as the Secret Flower. The remaining cards are divided between the players: about half become hidden flower cards that players keep face down, while the other half are dealt as playable hand cards.

• Cooperative deduction: Work together to identify the hidden Secret Flower.
• Limited communication: Use the available information carefully as the game develops.
• Question cards: Play hand cards to ask questions that reveal partial information about the face-down flowers.
• Two difficulty levels: The standard game and Expert difficulty use different deduction requirements.

Players take turns playing their hand cards and strategically asking the questions shown on them. Each question helps uncover part of the information surrounding the hidden cards, but the Secret Flower itself remains unknown until the group has enough evidence to reason out its identity.

When all the playable cards have been used, the team must reach the required conclusion. In the standard game, most players must be able to logically deduce the Secret Flower to win; in the Expert game, all players must do so.

With its small card count and concentrated deduction system, The Secret Flower offers a short cooperative puzzle centered on communication limits and shared reasoning.