Description
You’re life is in turmoil. You have many potential opportunities ahead of you but don’t know how to take them. You are not alone. You have someone with you who can help. You also have 12 magic beans, each represents a value, an opportunity or an ambition to fulfil. By bringing fire and water to each bean you bring it to LIFE! Work together and bring them all to life to win the game.
Each of you will score points along the way by adding the scores on the beans as you activate them. The player who activates the bean keeps it. Game ends when you can’t activate any more beans. The winner is the player with the highest score
Game for 2 players. Time to play is 1 – 2 hours.
Setting up
You will need the following items for the game:
- 2 players
- 1 red and one blue permanent pen (sharpies are good)
- 24 large white beans (butter beans are good)
- A large sheet of paper (A3 is minimum size you’d want to use for this)
- a small bowl
- 1 regular die
Preparing the beans
Each player chooses either red or blue and takes 12 beans each and writes down on each bean one value-word. You should think of things which mean a lot to you that you can put into single words. Players then put the beans in order from 1 to 12 in order of importance to them and write that number on the back of the bean. So 10 would be your most important value-word.
Throwing the beans
Each player takes turns to throw the beans onto the paper so that they scatter widely. Care should be taken to try to stop beans falling outside of the paper. Any beans that fall out are put out of play and won’t be returned to players. If beans are very close together, they should be moved by hand a bit so that you have at least 1 cm between them.
Marking positions
With your pens, replace each bean of your own colour with a drawn bean – trying roughly to get the size and orientation of the bean. Try to get both the value-word and the number inside the bean shape you have just drawn. Put the bean into the small bowl. In around 10 minutes both players should have all the beans in the bowl.
Rules
Roll the dice to see who will start. The player with the highest number goes first.
Player 1 starts the game as guide. As guide you must roll the dice to see which beans will be connected with fire or water by your partner. If you roll 1 to 4 then you can choose which 2 beans will be connected. If you roll 5 – 6 then you have to take a chance and pick 2 random beans out of the bean pot. You will then tell player 2 that they must connect these 2 beans with their coloured pen.
Player 2 starts the game as activator. As activator you must draw the lines to make the connections and activate the potential in each bean – to bring it to life. You must take instruction from the guide and connect the 2 beans they tell you. Use your own coloured pen and draw a line from the edge of one bean to the edge of the other.
Switch roles.
Player 2 becomes guide and rolls the dice to begin the new turn. Player 1 becomes activator and draws the next line. You each then take turns to be guide and activator until the end of the game.
Activation!
If you are the activator and you draw the second line to any bean – you have activated it! well done. You win the bean and the points on it. Take the bean and keep it near you.
Game ends when no more connections can be made. At the end of play, all the bean values are added up and negative scores are deducted. The winner is the one with the highest score.
Exceptions
- No lines must cross
- No beans directly next to each other should be joined unless by chance
- Each bean can have only 2 connecting lines coming from it
- Each bean must have a blue and a red line connecting to it.
- If a connection cannot be made (because it’s trapped or the pen is the wrong colour) both beans are crossed out and taken out of play
- photo by sleepyneko