Your previous village was ransacked by barbarians. You hardly had time to pick up the baby and your favorite fishing pole before the burning and pillaging started. You wandered over a cruel desert, braved frozen peaks, and paddled a log across a rough sea, striking at the sharks whenever they got too close, the baby strapped securely to your back.

Then you discovered it! The perfect place to call your new home. But as soon as you had the first hut built, you discovered a large network of caverns underground, brimming with shiny treasures, rare resources, and untold adventure. How could you restrict your new village to the surface? You swiftly start organizing expeditions and building houses underground as well as on the surface.

With some luck, you'll build a village even stronger than your last-- strong enough, to turn away barbarians the next time they come knocking.

Above and Below is a mashup of storytelling and town-building where you and up to three friends compete to build the best village above and below ground. In the game, you dispatch your villagers to perform jobs like exploring the cave, harvesting resources, and constructing houses. Each villager has different skills and abilities, and you must choose how to best use them. You have your own personal village board, and you move the villagers on this board to various areas to indicate that they've been given jobs to perform. Will you send Hanna to the expedition to the cave? Or should she spend her time teaching necessary skills to one of the young villagers?

A great cavern lies below the surface, waiting for you to explore-- this is where the storytelling comes in. When you send a group of villagers to explore the below, one of your friends reads what happens to you from a book of paragraphs. You'll be given a choice of how to proceed, and a lot will depend on which villagers you brought on the journey, and who you're willing to sacrifice to succeed. The book of paragraphs is full of amazing adventures, randomly chosen each time you visit the cavern.

At the end of the game, the player with the best well-developed village wins!