“Ladies and gentlemen, the stock market for high-flyers is experiencing some turbulence. Therefore, you will experience peaks and valleys. You will fly with us at your own management and risk. Hold On for Dear Life!” In Up Too High, a number of airlines fight for the runway to the top, but before you know it, you’re In Too Deep and the costs go Up Too High.
Up Too High is the spiritual sequel to In Too Deep. Both games are by Dutch game author Joost de Kruijf and are published by Dutch publisher Jolly Dutch. Both games are about investing in companies and a funny pun is included as the title of the game. In Up Too High, it is appropriately about shares in airline companies.
In Up Too High, players try to acquire shares in companies and ensure that the companies in which they have acquired shares grow as much as possible. At the beginning of the game, several companies are placed on the table along with an airport and a plaque for the company’s potential president. Each company also starts with an initial capital to already assign some value to it. The player with the most shares, becomes president and can make big decisions. The player with the most value in shares, wins Up Too High. Just don’t fly too close to the sun, or the relative value of your shares can crash again just as fast.
Up Too High is played in several rounds. Each round consists of a stock phase and company phase. During the stock phase, bids are made for shares. Each player takes turns placing a stock face up on the table. Nice detail is that cards have different purposes, cards could possibly act as stocks, airplanes or airports. Players then bid with cards from their hand that also function as money. Players with the most shares of a company become the president of the company. After the shares phase follows the companies phase, in alphabetical order actions are performed by the presidents of the companies. A company receives income depending on its airport level and may also receive income from planes flying out. Income is added to capital and the capital can be used to invest in the airport or pay dividends to shareholders. When the draw pile is empty for the third time and shuffled again during a round, this is the final round. The game ends when Company G has acted in this round.
By buying and investing smartly, you can actually gain control of a lot of companies, manipulate the stock price and value and become quite rich as a result in this funny and complex card game for the economists among us.
