Above And Below

[Decar]

Last night, my wife and I played 'Above & Below' by Ryan Laukat.  I kickstarted this having watched a runthrough (against my wife's recommendations).  For those of you who don't know Ryan Laukat, is a bit of a board game polymath capable of designing games and artwork and essentially self-publishing his games.

We recently played Artifacts Inc, which is a Dice Engine Building game, where you refine a mechanism for scoring points.

At its core, Above and Below is an adventure game.  Your band of merry townsfolk, must go off exploring and use your limited actions to build buildings or employ more workers.  Ultimately, you're trying to create your 'engine' that generates points at the end of the game.  The differentiator, is the storytelling aspect; you can go exploring (in caves) and by rolling a dice, select a paragraph from a pretty big book, your other players read to you.

The paragraph, sets the scene and you're left with choices, which require 'explore' points in order the achieve.  Depending on the skill of your workers, this may be easy, but if necessary, you may 'injure' your party in order to earn a few more points and succeed at the event.  The outcome of the events are not known to you at the time, so there is a great risk/reward element to this game.

We truly loved playing this game. It looked quite complicated to begin with, but within the first few rounds you should be well on your way to finding the 'engine/machine' you need to exploit to score-points at the end of the game.  Like Artifacts Inc, we found it hard to determine each other's scores, so you're left trying to optimize every turn.  The game only lasts 7-rounds, our 2-player game lasted 80minutes.  My wife is not a gamer, but she loved the story element (and loved watching me get terrible luck in the caves).  She totally kicked my ass.  I think this is also a great family game, but possibly with 2-adults if the child's reading isn't confident.

The storytelling aspect is fantastic.  Players don't really interact very much, so reading paragraphs to each other (and putting silly voices to the characters) was really fun.  The book has about 300 paragraphs in it, so there's little chance of hitting a repeat any time soon.

Many boxes ticked for me here:  Storytelling, worker placement, engine building, risk reward, dice rolling.

For those interested, you may want to check these videos:

Rahdo's Runthrough:


Watch It Played:


Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2302.0

[Decar]

The sequel to 'Above and Below' has been announced on kickstarter today, it's called 'Near & Far' and looks to be as awesome as last time:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/953146955/near-and-far-storytelling-board-game

This was an insta-pledge for me!

[Paul]

Sounds very interesting!

I don't know how much my group would fancy the reading element in general but I know at least 2 people at the club who loves this kind of stuff.

[Decar]

All of the stories are great fun, I have some Examples which aren't too spoilery:

I really liked the engine building aspect of the game; perhaps not as complex as varied as Artifact Inc, but there's a lot of choices to number crunch 

[Chooselife]

I came across Near & Far, during the daily Kickstarter roaming, and it got my immediate attention.

I got worried when I understood that Above & Below existed and that I pretty much need to have it, also! after spending the lunch hour watching the game-play runs through.

A pity that they don't have a get both games pledge on the Near & Far Kickstarter

I love the reading element, it takes me right back to the Fighting Fantasy books I read growing up.

[Decar]

But there's no need to wait for KS to end, Above and Below is available right now!

[Chooselife]

But there's no need to wait for KS to end, Above and Below is available right now!

Indeed but it could represent a discount.

I'll probably try and take adjantage of the lower brexiting pound and order it on the UK. Here is about 50EUR.

[Chooselife]

I'll probably try and take advantage of the lower brexiting pound and order it on the UK. Here is about 50EUR.

I manage to buy it as a Christmas present to self @38.99GBP, shipping included from xbiteworld on ebay.co.uk (publicity not intended).

I manage to play a full game yesterday against my almost 5yrs and it is a great, great, game, the mechanics are really simple to start playing and the strategy kicks in really slowly.
Off course that my daughter just wants to buy the prettiest cards/villagers but even then I can teach her basics maths and she absolutely loves with the exploring stories.

Can't wait to play against a "proper" opponent and even my non-player Wife who was doing the reading, started to get drawn into the game mechanics.