Above and Below

Above and Below Deep Dive

What the Community Thinks About Above and Below

Above and Below occupies a special place in gaming circles as a bridge between two traditions that rarely find common ground. Reviewers consistently praise how the game manages to blend a solid Euro-style building and resource management system with a narrative adventure experience, without forcing either side to take a backseat. The community response emphasizes the game's charm, accessible complexity, and the way it brings families and casual gamers to the table alongside experienced players seeking something different from their usual fare.

What stands out most in discussions of Above and Below is the universal delight in the encounter book, a storybook that transforms cave exploration from a simple mechanic into a memorable social experience. Reviewers highlight how the game creates moments of genuine laughter and surprise, where the stories read aloud make characters come alive in the minds of players.

Core Mechanics That Define Above and Below

Worker Placement Through Villagers

At its heart, Above and Below deploys worker placement mechanics through villagers that players recruit and develop throughout the game. Each villager has distinct abilities, shown through symbols like hammers for building and quills for training. Players assign these villagers to action spaces on their personal board, selecting from actions like explore, harvest, build, train, and labour. The beauty of this system lies in its flexibility. You can send villagers on solo journeys to build cottages, or band together a team to descend into the caverns below. The constraint comes not from rigid action spaces, but from how many beds you have to rest exhausted workers, creating a gentle push-and-pull where recruiting too many people without housing creates real problems for your engine.

Set Collection and Resource Management

Villages rise and fall on your ability to gather goods and arrange them wisely. Players collect resources like mushrooms, fish, rope, and pottery from both above-ground buildings and cave discoveries, then place them into advancement tracks for end-game scoring. The genius of this mechanic is that larger sets of identical goods score exponentially more points. This incentivizes players to specialize and build engines that repeatedly produce the same resources, creating satisfying moments when a carefully planned building chain finally delivers what you need. Yet the game never punishes exploration, because the cave cards you collect grant empty spaces for underground outposts, and some of those outposts generate the exact resources you were chasing.

The Above and Below Experience

Adventure-Driven Storytelling

The encounter book is the heart of what makes Above and Below feel alive. When players explore, they roll a die, and another player reads them a paragraph from the storybook. These are not throwaway flavor text. They present real choices, each with different difficulty levels and rewards. A player might stumble upon a pale blue frog locked in a cage and choose to save it or move on. Another exploration might have you befriend strange spike-backed creatures called gloos and earn their favor. Reviewers universally praise how reading these stories aloud creates shared moments of discovery, where the outcome hinges on dice rolls that feel genuinely suspenseful because the stakes include both mechanical rewards and narrative consequence. The stories are written with humor and heart, and the simple act of having another player read the encounter book transforms a turn into a social event rather than a solo decision.

Cozy Discovery and Emergent Narrative

Above and Below creates what reviewers describe as a cozy game experience wrapped around genuine adventure. The game encourages you to build things, gather resources, and create a functioning village with real personality. Characters in your village get names, backstories, and relationships through the stories that emerge at the table. Our Family Plays Games highlighted how characters become emotional centers of their game, with quirky personalities developing naturally through play. These emergent narratives come not from the rulebook, but from the space the game creates for player storytelling. The game never forces conflict, yet it enables it naturally through competition and resource scarcity. At the same time, the cooperative elements, like trading goods with other players, keep the community feeling connected rather than purely adversarial.

What Makes Above and Below Stand Out

The Perfect Balance of Theme and Mechanics

Many games attempt to marry theme and mechanics, and most choose a winner. Above and Below refuses to make that choice. 3 Minute Board Games notes that you can absolutely win the game by ignoring the caves entirely and simply building efficient buildings above ground, collecting the right goods, and optimizing your advancement track. The theming never gets in the way of valid strategy. Yet a player who throws themselves into exploration and embraces the adventuring narrative never feels like they are playing a different game or taking a worse path. The cave cards you gain give you real board space, the goods you find fuel your economy, and the reputation you gain from encounters converts directly to points. This seamlessness means that whether your table wants pure optimization or pure storytelling, the game accommodates both at once.

The Encounter Book as Engine of Joy

While many games use random encounter decks, the encounter book stands apart because it creates shared narrative moments rather than isolated surprises. The act of reading aloud, the humor embedded in the writing, the way players discuss which path to take before rolling, and the collective reaction to results all combine into something greater than the sum of their parts. Reviewers repeatedly mention specific encounters from their games, suggesting that even when the same cave card can be drawn again, the shared social experience of reading and deciding makes each encounter feel fresh. The flexibility of the storybook, where players can choose different difficulty options tied to different story outcomes, means exploration never feels like a binary lucky or unlucky roll.

Potential Drawbacks

Narrative Elements May Underwhelm Hardcore Euro Devotees

Reviewers who live purely in the world of economic engines and optimization puzzles sometimes find the narrative layer extraneous. The dice rolling and randomness inherent in exploration can frustrate players who believe games should reward superior planning over luck. For these gamers, the encounter book reads as flavor rather than substance, and the exploration action becomes a gamble that pure building or set collection avoids. The game's moderate complexity also means it never reaches the intricate depth of heavier euros, leaving some players feeling it sits in an awkward middle ground.

Story-First Gamers May Crave Deeper Narrative

Conversely, players seeking a true narrative arc, like the one found in branching story games or legacy systems, may find that Above and Below offers flavor without genuine narrative consequence. Your village's story is mostly your own invention. The encounter book provides color and options, but unlike dedicated storytelling games, it does not build toward character arcs or a culminating plot. The game emphasizes discovery and variety over consequence and player agency over outcomes. For some tables, this lightweight approach to narrative suffices perfectly. For others, it feels like a road not taken.

If You Enjoy Above and Below

Fans of Above and Below often gravitate toward its spiritual sequel, Near and Far, which deepens the narrative layer with actual overarching stories and character development. The game also shares DNA with Village and other city-building games, though those lack the adventure element. If you appreciate the encounter book's social reading experience, Mice and Mystics delivers heavier narrative with combat, while Stuffed Fables offers similar storybook-driven adventures. Those who love the cozy building feeling without the story might enjoy Flamecraft or Everdell, both of which emphasize pleasant optimization and beautiful production. Players wanting more tactical decision-making from the exploration system could explore Clank!, where the push-your-luck elements carry higher mechanical weight.