Upside Town

When you were little, did you enjoy playing with magnets? Now you get to play with magnets under the guise of a strategic boardgame. Upside Town is designed by Singaporean designer Quentin Quek and published by PlayByDesign. Quentin comes from a product design background, and it shows in how well put together Upside Town is. This is not a game with a gimmick. The magnets are a central mechanism that helps with gameplay. 

Let's first talk about the three types of blocks in the game. The red blocks are a single level high. The yellow blocks are two levels high. The green blocks are three levels high. All these blocks have magnets at both ends. The red blocks have a magnetic north at one end and a magnetic south at the other. The yellow blocks are norths at both ends. The green blocks are souths at both ends. This means yellows cannot be stacked with other yellows, or green with green. However reds can be stacked on any other colour, and themselves too. 

You start with a player board like this. Player boards are different between the players. Your five construction sites are magnetised too, and they are either north (plus sign) or south (blank). The polarity determines which colours you can build at a site. On the right you see a warehouse with four spaces. You will start the game with some blocks here. During the game you can acquire blocks and place them here. You can also upgrade blocks to a larger type. You can even split blocks. The warehouse is for you to prepare for construction. Construction is one action. You can move any number of pieces from your warehouse to your sites. During the game you can also demolish blocks. You can completely demolish a building, or partially demolish it from the top downwards. 

You do all this for the sake of completing objectives. These are objective cards. During the game you claim these objectives and try to complete them to score points. This is the aspect where you will compete with your opponents. You are fighting over the same pool of objectives. All the objectives are expressed in terms of configurations of buildings. When you complete an objective, you score points, and you also get some reward, e.g. a free block, or a free construction or demolish action. 

Along the top of this photo above you can see some public scoring criteria. You try to meet these criteria by game end to score points. These are applicable to everyone and you don't claim the cards. 

You can keep at most three incomplete objectives. You must complete an objective to move it to your completed stack, so that you can claim a new objective. 

The magnetised blocks give a nice tactile playing experience. The magnets physically enforce the rules. If you accidentally try to break a block stacking rule, the magnets remind you because you can't physically stack those blocks. They repel each other. 

This is a game of planning and efficiency. You want to pick objectives that are similar, so that with as few actions as possible you can complete many of them. You need to think about the order you want to complete the objectives, so that you minimise actions needed. The game is a little solitaire, since you don't directly affect your opponents. The main thing you fight over is the objectives. Sometimes you want to take objectives which are easy for your opponents to complete. 

This end game scoring card says you should try to have as few red blocks as possible. If you have 3 or fewer by game end, you will score 3 points. 

Upside Town is a light strategy game that offers a unique play experience. This copy I played is a 3D-printed prototype and not even the final product yet. The game will be at the Essen game fair in 2026.