Up or Down?

• Designer: Wolfgang Kramer & Michael Kiesling
• Publisher: Capstone Games
• Players:  2-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 mins
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Up or Down?, you build ascending and descending rows of cards, trying to place as many cards of the same color in a row as possible. Card rows with many cards of the same color score lots of points.

To set up, shuffle the deck, deal each player a hand of three cards, reveal six cards and place them in a ring from low to high, then split the deck in half and place these piles in the center of the ring, one face up and the other face down. The deck contains cards numbered 1-126, although you adjust the deck based on the number of players.

On a turn, place a card from your hand between the surrounding numbers in the ring, e.g., 37 between 34 and 52, then you take one of the cards surrounding your just-placed card and add it to your display, either starting a new row or adding to an existing row. (If your card is lower than the lowest number or higher than the highest, place it between the lowest and highest card, then add one of those cards to your display.)

You can have up to three rows in your display. When you place a second card in a row, you must decide whether the cards in that row will be placed in ascending order or descending, and you stack the cards accordingly. If you cannot or do not want to place a card in a row — following the ascending or descending order you set up — take all the cards in a row of your choice, flip them face down into a personal discard pile, then start a new row with your current card.

To end your turn, draw a card from either pile inside the ring. Once all the cards in the game have been played, score your rows. For each row, multiply the number of cards in that row by the number of cards in the most common color in that row. For each card in your discard pile, score 1 point. Whoever has the most points wins.

My thoughts on the game

This is one of those games that is proof that sometimes you need to play a game multiple times before making up your mind on it.  My first game of this was played on the Wednesday of Spiel 2024 in the hotel lobby, and man, we aborted the game about halfway through – it didn’t feel like there was a game here to be played, and everyone wanted to quit.

I packed the box up, brought it home, and pulled it out again a few weeks later.  I re-read the rules to make sure that we weren’t playing with bad rules the first time – and it felt like we had not. However, on this second play, I could see some strategies forming. It was an interesting challenge to build your three columns up in the best way to score.  Do you simply concentrate on making them as long as possible; or do you make large jumps in order to get a card of the most prevalent color to increase your multiplier?  With some clever plays from your hand, you can try to set yourself up to pick up a card on a later turn that you have yourself played into the circle.

The game definitely has its fans, so much so that the game has been reprinted with new art by Capstone Games in 2025.  This new version has some new art – with slick elevators on the cards.

For me – the game definitely feels like it plays better with a lower player count; I’m almost tempted to say the 2 or 3 is the sweet spot for me.  At counts higher than that, it’s hard to develop any plan of picking up your own cards; there are simply too many turns that happen in-between.  Maybe your card is picked up. Maybe the numbers on either side change too much and you no longer can play in an anticipated gap.  In any event, the game definitely feels too random for me at higher player counts.

The full game also feels a bit long for what you get – even though you do modify the deck to suit the player count.  Most people I have played with agree and feel like the game is about a third too long.  The new rules actually seem to agree with me as there are rules for both a short game as well as a regular game.   The length of the game works internally either way; the regular game is just overall longer than I want to play this sort of game – so I’m happy to officially have a short version.

Up or Down has its moments, and as I have noted, probably best at a lower player count.  The game definitely has its fans around here, so I suspect that I will still play this new version more over the winter.  And who knows, perhaps further secrets will be revealed to me with further plays – and my rating might continue to rise?

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.  Dale, Melissa, Craig M, Ben B
• Neutral. Joe H
• Not for me… John P, Ryan P