Playing with special beans in Bean To Me! is messing with my brain

Don't judge me on this one, but I've been playing with beans for a while in the new release of Bean To Me! from Melonleaf Industries / Very Evil Demons. Note: key provided to our Steam Curator.

Yes, beans. Inspired by the ancient game of Mancala, it's all about two players trying to move beans around a simple board with little cups. It's strangely captivating and takes a while to learn properly but the basic idea is simple enough. You're just moving beans from one side of the board to the other, eventually getting them into your big pot to score and it's a race of minds in turn-based strategy to get as many beans as possible before one player runs out and the game is over.

On the surface it may seem quite simple however it's anything but. And I don't think I've quite gotten the hang of it properly yet, but I'm really enjoying the idea as I've not actually played a game like this before. Mechanically simple at least, you just click a pot that has beans and your hand will gather them all up, moving to the right depositing one bean over each pot as it goes. It doesn't stop on your side though, if you click a pot with many beans your hand will keep going over to your opponent to deposit beans as well.

The key is in the bean placement, as there's ways to steal a whole big lot of beans from your opponent. You can also get an extra go if you plan right, by dropping your last bean in your hand into your big pot to add to your score with no beans going to your opponent's side. Then there's all the special kinds of beans you can unlock to take into battle with you, some might even explode destroying other beans that can really mess with things.

There's quite a lot to think about during each run. And I actually needed to play the tutorial twice to properly get the mechanics. After that, it's a lot of trial and error with all the different types of special beans and before you know it a few hours have vanished like a runner bean.

Playable in single-player, local multiplayer and online too so you can challenge friends. It has Native Linux support and works great.

Really great. A wonderful idea that's simple to get into but surprisingly hard to master and will keep you thinking for hours. Cheap too at £4.29 when not on sale.