Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Uptown is currently available for preorder from Funagain Games. You can get it through your local retailer if they order it from the FRED Network.
The Components
Uptown is published in a small square box with a workmanlike set of components:
Game Board: A four-panel game board printed on linen-textured cardboard. It shows a 9x9 grid wherein pieces will be placed during the game, and as with much of the game looks like it was illustrated with clip art.
Game Tiles: 28 tiles in each of five different player colors (blue, green, yellow, brown, red). These are all glossy heavy cardboard tiles. 9 feature letters, 9 feature numbers, and 9 feature icons. The 28th tile features a dollar sign. The graphics on th etiles are all black and white or grayscale and fairly simple.
Plastic Trays: Each player gets a good quality Scrabble-like tray to place their tiles in as they draw them.
Rules: A one-page color, glossy rulesheet.
Overall the components for Uptown are high quality, but the graphics are very plain, and somewhat disappointing--though this has no impact on the game itself. Balancing these I've given it a "3" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
The object of Uptown is to play 24 of your 28 tiles in as few interconnected groups as possible.
Setup: Each players chooses a color, shuffles their 28 tiles, draws 5, and places them on their tray.
Play begins with a first player.
About Groups: A core concept of the game is groups. A group of tiles is a set of tiles belonging to one player which are all orthogonally connected to each other.
Placing a Tile: On his turn a player will have a five tiles to choose from. He must play one on the 9x9 Uptown grid.
There are four different types of tiles in the game, each of which has a different rule for placement.
9 of the tiles are numbered (1-9). Each of the numbers corresponds to a column in the grid, and the tile must be placed on one of the 9 spaces in that column.
9 of the tiles have letters on them (A-I) which correspond to rows; each of these tiles must be placed somewhere in the corresponding row.
9 of the tiles have pictures on them, each of which refers to one of nine 3x3 sections on the board. These tiles must be played in the appropriate section.
Finally one tile has a dollar sign on it; it may be placed anywhere on the board.
Additional Placement Restrictions. A tile may be placed in any appropriate open space on the board. Alternatively a tile may be placed upon another tile (capturing it) providing doing so doesn't split an opponent's group of tiles into multiple groups (meaning that you can only capture tiles on the edges of an opponent's group--or singletons).
Drawing a Tile: After a player places a tile he draws a new tile.
Ending the Game: The game ends after each player has drawn all 28 of their tiles, then played one of the last 5 tiles from their hand.
The player with the fewest groups of tiles is the winner; in case of ties, it's the player among them who captured the fewest tiles from other players. (This is often an important tie-breaker, since 1 or 2 groups often wins.)
Relationships to Other Games
With its 9x9 grid broken into rows, columns, and 3x3 sections, I'd bet that Uptown began life as a Sudoku game, a trend that was popular a year or two ago. If so, it quickly rose above its origins.
Although described as a tile laying game, that really doesn't do justice to what Uptown is, because this is nothing like Carcassonne, Entdecker or others of the genre. Really Uptown is a game about building connections across the board, battling with your opponents to try and make sure you build in front of them. As such I found it more like Twixt, Knots, PUNCT and other edge-to-edge connection games. This sort of connectivity isn't exactly a requirement in Uptown but it's definitely a good idea, and thus superior gameplay reflects this fact.
The Game Design
I'll start by saying Uptown is a great filler. It's a short 30-minute game that nonetheless manages to pack a lot of game into that time period.
The game, played well, is very aggressive. It's a bitter fight to the end as you try and cut through your opponents, ensuring that you're the one that is able to build a solid line from one side of the board to the other (and thus connect all the different rows, columns, and sections you'll need to).
Implicit to this is brinkmanship and trying to suss ou twhat you can do that your opponents either won't or can't respond to.
Some of the players I played with complained about the randomness in the game, and it's definitely an element, as is the case in any tile-drawing game, but I think it's a smaller element than they do. Throughout the game you will see all 28 of your tiles, and you will have an opportunity to play 24 of them that you choose, so you can plan for what you'll draw in the future, you just have to be careful to do it in ways that your opponents can't interfere with.
If there's a random element in the game, it's the chaos introduced by other players; if everyone decides to go after you, there's little you can do. This is controlled somewhat by their own self-interest, but it nonetheless can be an issue--but that's a pretty common factor in games which allow very direct attacks between the players.
Overall, I'll stand with my original statement: this is a great little game, and my favorite filler game thus far of the year. I've given it a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
A light game of building connections and laying your set tiles well, Uptown is one of the best fillers released in 2007.
