Red Raven Above and Below

By far, the best 4 player game I have ever played! It feels like a simplified version of DnD. I really love that I can play with just two people too. This is the only two player board game we own. My husband and I have tons of fun. We have played with several of our friends too. It is a little confusing at first, but that is what YouTube instructionals are for. Once you know how to play, it goes by so fast and you lose track of time. The art is also beautiful and the exploration stories are all unique and interconnected.

Just a great game, don't bother with any of the derivatives as this original has it all. Perhaps an extension, although we're still exploring the basic game stories. Get the extension pack later. The game is, strictly speaking, competitive (rather than collaborative) and you can hinder other players from achieving their goals, but it's not nasty.

Above & Below is a beautiful game focused around story-telling and village-building. There are really 2 parts to it. The "Above" - building your village up, training villagers and assigning tasks to them. And the "Below" - exploring caves, reading paragraph length stories to each other and making choices about what to do. The play is pretty non-competitive and gentle and I have yet to see anything dying or being killed (your villagers are just tired even if they fail their tasks) so this is perfect for playing with children. However there are also plenty of choices to make and lots of nice systems in place to make this enjoyable for adult players as well. Systems are reasonably straightforward and make sense once you get used to them and there are a few videos online to help out if you get confused at all. The only downside for me is that you only discover who has won at the end when you total up the points and the game ends after a certain number of turns, which can make it feel a little bit like you've not completed the story yet. Games do last an hour or so, which is plenty of time though. I bought this to play with my 6 year old son, who doesn't normally deal with losing too well, but he has been absolutely fine with this as the game itself is so enjoyable. Winning or losing feels almost incidental. It's really fun to train people up and then send them out to work (and there are some special villagers which you can only get from "below" which make things a bit more varied) but the undoubted star is the exploration and the "choose your own adventure" stories. I would recommend this game for all ages really. It's well-designed, beautiful to look at and really fun to play.

I bought this for my husband for Christmas and it has quickly become one of our favorite games to play! We are avid gamers who host a semi-regular game night, but also play two-player games together in the evenings. Above and Below very quickly won a top spot in our game rotation. The artwork is beautiful, the pieces are well made, and the "Choose your own adventure" aspect makes for a very interesting twist to a resource management/worker placement style game. The scenarios during exploring are fun and varied, and perfectly complement the game. We have seen a very small bit of repetition in scenarios, but never get the same scenario multiple times in one. We have not found it to negatively impact the game at all, in part because it is a rare occurrence and also because we can never remember the specifics of what the rewards we previously received were. So far, we have only played this with two players, and it works terrifically (which is not always the case with 4 player games). It is not as directly competitive as most two player games, since it is hard to get a good handle on who is ahead in VP during game play. We've also had fun with reading the scenarios to each other, adopting funny voices and occasionally making up our own flavor text to go along with the outcome if nothing more than a reward/penalty was outlined. Players ends up using varying strategies to get ahead, and there's also a bit of luck introduced through dice rolling and the randomness that workers and buildings may appear.. Gameplay is broken up into several rounds. During each round, players take turns using their workers to complete various tasks: build, teach/recruit, explore, harvest, or labor. Once all players have either exhausted their available workforce (or taken a pass at continuing), the round ends. At the end of the round, the players and game play area go through maintenance (refreshing worker and building pools, refreshing workers based on available beds, using any ciders and potions, gaining income from the advancement track, etc). The round marker advances, the Player 1 card rotates to a new player, and then the next round begins. Here is a break down of your possible actions during a turn: Teach/Recruit: workers with the feather icon are considered teachers, and are able to recruit other workers (from an available pool) into your workforce. You may use one teacher to recruit per turn and each recruit will also cost you money. New recruits are then added to your workforce for use in future rounds (though you can build structures that give you the ability to put them into use during the current round). Build: you may use one of your builder workers per turn to build a new structure, which is chosen from a pool of displayed cards. Buildings have associated costs, but they can earn you goods for harvesting, VP, or ongoing bonuses during gameplay (extra beds for your workers, the ability to re-roll dice, etc). Labor: you may use one worker per turn to do general labor. This earns you an additional coin and, if you are the first person to labor during a round, a cider token that can help restore exhausted workers. Harvest: you may use one or more workers to harvest available goods from your established buildings above or below ground. Not all buildings produce goods. These goods can then be used in your advancement track (gaining you additional coins at the end of each round, as well as additional VP at the end of the game), can be put up for sale for the other players to purchase, or remain in limbo until you decide how to use them. Explore: you may send two or more workers per turn to explore the caves underground. You are given a scenario card and roll a dice to determine which encounter your workers will play through. Another player then reads you the scenario out loud and gives you options as to how to proceed. You choose how you want to respond (do you try to steal from the old woman, or try to help her?Stay at the inn or keep exploring? Run from danger or stand and fight?) and then roll a dice for each worker to determine your level of success. The successes that your workers earn determine your overall success level (or failure) for the encounter, and any prizes (coins, goods, etc) or penalties are awarded. You may also experience an increase or decrease in your reputation based on what you chose to do. So, while it may be beneficial to steal from someone in terms of rewards, you will likely lose reputation by doing so. Once workers have been used for a task, they move to the Exhausted area of your game board. There is also an Exertion option where workers who are exploring can exert themselves to gain an additional success for their expedition, though this means it will take more time for them to rejoin the active workforce. Exhausted and Exerted workers can recuperate using an empty bed to regain one level of stamina (so, exhausted moves to ready, and exerted moves to exhausted). You can only use one worker per bed you have at the end of each round. In addition, cider may also be used to move Exhausted workers to the Ready position, and potions can be used to move Exerted workers to Exhausted. At the end of the game, points are tallied by counting up your total number of buildings, the value of the goods on your advancement track, your reputation, and VP's/bonuses. The player with the most points overall wins. I really can't say enough positive things about this game. I'm looking forward to trying this out with more people, though I honestly can't see it losing anything by using three or four players instead of two.

Es increíble para los que están un poco más experimentados en los juegos de mesa. Tiene varias dinámicas que hacen al juego súper entretenido. Súper, súper recomendable para quienes quieren un juego competitivo con mecánicas diversas, pero aún así fácil de entender. Además el arte del juego es precioso