Review – Above & Below: Haunted

Having lived in the Marshlands for generations, you and your family are setting out for a new life in the western villages. Too bad no one told you the place was haunted. Let’s check out the latest game in the Arzium universe!

Review

Above & Below: Haunted is a reworking of Red Raven’s popular Above & Below. In this game, players compete to earn the most points by building out a tableau, which represents a village.

The game is played over 7 rounds, and in each round, players take actions using their villagers. Each player receives a personal board, along with a starting house and 3 starting villagers. The reputation board is placed in the central area, and 5 random villagers are dealt onto it.

On a player’s turn, they take 1 of 5 possible actions, or pass. The actions are:

1. EXPLORE: Draw a cave card and assign 2 or more villagers to it. Then, roll a die and turn to the section of the encounter book shown on the card. Caves come in 2 types: regular and dangerous, depending upon how easy/hard the encounter might be. Encounters involve die rolls and sometimes player decisions. For each villager the player assigned, they roll a die, and they may earn lantern icons depending upon the result. If they earn at least as many lanterns as the cave requires, they succeed at the encounter and earn a reward (plus a bonus if they exceed the threshold by 2 or more). Rewards can be resources, cards, villagers, etc.
2. BUILD: Spend a villager with a hammer symbol to buy a building card. Buildings are placed in 2 rows — thematically, above and below ground — according to their type. Houses go above, outposts go below. Outposts must be played on top of cave cards, meaning a player must have explored before they can build an outpost. Buildings give their owner perks like special abilities or increased income.
3. BANISH: Spend a villager with a quill symbol to remove all ghost pieces from the player’s tableau, except for 1. That remaining ghost is moved to an opponent’s building that doesn’t already have a ghost. (Ghosts hurt players’ reputation at the end of each round, so players want to avoid taking them if possible.) 
4. HIRE: Spend a villager with a quill symbol to purchase a new villager from the display, paying the associated cost. Cheaper villagers come with a ghost attached.
5. LABOR: Spend any number of villagers, gaining 1 coin for each of them. Each villager spent also allows the player to take a goods token from a building in their tableau. Goods offer money- and point-scoring opportunities, both from the advancement track (a set collection mechanism) and from buildings that ask for them.

In addition to these actions, which cost villagers, players can perform other, free actions, such as buying or selling goods from others, sweeping and refreshing the building cards (costs 1 coin), etc.

Play continues like this, with players taking villager actions and optional free actions, until everyone has passed. (Usually, that happens when all players’ villagers are spent.) At that time, players resolve end-of-round steps.

First, everyone moves down the reputation track for each ghost on their tableau. Then, players refill the display with new villager tiles and advance the round marker. Each bed on a player’s tableau also allows them to refresh a spent villager. (Sometimes, a villager will get injured, in which case it will take longer or cost extra resources to refresh them.)

Next, all players earn income, which is 3 coins by default, but may be more if a player has increased their income. Certain buildings also produce goods, which players can earn with the Labor action.

As players collect goods, they can place them onto their “advancement track,” to increase their income and earn game-end points.

At the conclusion of round 7, the game ends and players total their scores. Points come from things like players’ reputation, their buildings, their position on the advancement track, and their card bonuses. The player with the most points wins!

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Above & Below: Haunted is another strong offering from Red Raven, full of this publisher’s signature euro-storytelling flavor. Its hybrid design manages to be both strategic and narrative, mixing fun (at times silly) encounters with euro-style engine building. I have only played the original Above & Below once, and that was years ago, so it’s hard for me to make direct comparisons. That being said, I like Above & Below: Haunted a lot, more than I remember liking the original.

This game feels refined and strategic. The decision space begins with just a few options, but quickly opens up as players build out their tableaus. More villagers means more actions, and by the late game, players will be able to accomplish a fair bit each round.

There is a strong emphasis on exploration, which makes the game feel like an adventure, and while the encounter text is sometimes short, it helps bring the game-world to life. Beyond this, each cave card uses a die roll to decide which passage to read, so there is quite a bit of replay value.

The introduction of ghosts adds a cool wrinkle, as players try to keep their tableaus clear of them, while at the same time passing them to others. To that end, while the ghosts do add some interaction, they don’t feel overly mean or in-your-face. Since only 1 ghost is passed per Banish action, the effect on the opposing player feels more like an inconvenience than an attack.

The production — no surprise — is awesome, with Ryan Laukat’s trademark art style throughout. If you have played other Arzium games, this one will feel stylistically similar. The dice and ghost pieces both have sleek, metallic detailing, and they look awesome. Overall, it’s another high-quality product from Red Raven.

Bottom line, I’m pleased with Above & Below: Haunted, and it’s cool to see the original game get a refresh/update. If you like other Red Raven titles (or strategy games in general), I recommend checking this one out.

A review copy was provided by Red Raven Games.