Any similarity between this and other games involving beans is entirely coincidental. On your turn, draw two cards. You may then cash in a bean collection, which is only worth something if the number of beans in it equals the number on one of the cards it contains. Next, you must add at least one matching space bean card to an existing collection, or start a new one. You may have at most two collections, one of which may be secret (facedown). Finally, pass all cards in hand to the person on your right although play proceeds with the person on your left! The player who reaps the biggest bonanza from his space bean collections after someone has hit 30 points wins. Bean me up, Scotty!

I love the the Bohnanza game (one of my favorite). However, I have had the opportunity to play Space Beans and I think this is a WONDERFUL game (almost better than Bohnanza)! I had tons of fun playing it. It might not be for everyone but I think it is great.

In this game, you basically pass around the cards to the player before you. On your turn, you either draw additional cards, or play only the hand you've had passed to you. You're only allowed to play one kind (color) of card each turn, so whatever you don't play, you give to the previous player for the next round.

The mechanics are very simple, quick to learn for even a child, but subtle enough for adults to think carefully about each play. The rounds go quite quickly once you get used to the hand-passing direction being opposite the order of play. You can play a complete game in 1/2 hour to 45 minutes.

Great fun for the price. We play it when we want something fairly quick, it has almost no set up time (just shuffle and deal).

First of all, let's make note of the fact that everybody reviewing this game at less than four stars states that they are comparing the game to [page scan/se=0027/sf=category/fi=stockall.asc/ml=20]Bohnanza.

The game is marketed as being in the Bohnanza family, so I guess the comparison is inevitable. But once you get past the idea that you're not keeping your hand of cards in a particular order or negotiating trades with other players, you've got quite a nice little card game here if you'll just give it the chance it deserves.

You do trade cards, but the trades aren't negotiated. Instead, you have a very small hand of cards out of which you must meld one color on your turn and then pass ALL the rest of the cards to the player on your right. Thus do the cosmic trade winds circulate the SpaceBeans.

If you are playing the game with smart card players, people will know to minimize the number of cards they pass to the next player and thus will only use the option to draw two extra cards at the beginning of the turn if they're stuck for something to meld. (You can only have two beanfields going at a time.)

The mechanisms are smooth, they're smart, and they're going to wear well. If you like Bohnanza, then fine, play Bohnanza. If you like other kinds of card games, too, you should give SpaceBeans a try. It's a good, solid game.