Down-in-one Street

A satirical game based on the Partygate scandal where players first set the rules, then break them.

Tried and tested by Friday Afternoons
2-8 players
60 minutes
Requirements
  • A printed copy of the game fromĀ no10.lineagegaming.co.uk
  • Seven standard dice*
  • Seven coins
  • Pencils (ideally one per player)
  • Erasers (ideally one per player)
  • A calculator (optional)

*If there aren't seven dice available, a standard deck of playing cards can be used instead by subtracting 6 from anything between 7 and Queen, and discarding Kings and Jokers. The cards should be shuffled after each use.

Website: no10.lineagegaming.co.uk

Down-in-one Street is Lineage Gaming's first publicly available game. It can be downloaded for free from the website above for printing at home.

Overview

In the game, players take on the role of the government during the COVID-19 pandemic and work together to throw illegal lockdown parties without getting caught. The aim is to score points by inviting more guests and breaking more lockdown restrictions, but these same actions put the players at higher risk of being exposed. Succeeding is a balancing act where players have to work together to break some, but not too many rules, despite completing some of their actions in secret.

 

Down-in-one Street characters stood in a line

Parties

The aforementioned secret actions form the Planning and Masking Up stages of each party. Because players don't know what others have opted to do in these stages, there's every chance that the same action will be completed several times and restrictions will get broken as a result. Equally, a variety of different actions could be completed and these stages could end with no restrictions being broken. This secret start to parties ensures that each one is different, and sets players up for the next phase, Partying.

The Partying stage has the players choosing one action each, in order, out in the open. This is where players can mitigate any damage done in the previous stages (whether that be too many or too few restrictions broken), but since each player makes their own decision, any differences of opinion in how much risk to take can show themselves here. As an example, one player might opt to open windows so that the "windows must be open" restriction won't get broken, but a player whose turn comes after them may choose to undo their work and close them again in the hunt for bigger points. During Partying, however, it's important for the players to keep in mind the looming Guest Behaviour stage that follows.

Players have no more control once Guest Behaviour is reached, but the actions they've taken previously can lead to additional restrictions being broken. For instance, if one of the players arranged to bring karaoke to the party and several others brought drinks (all completed secretly during Planning) then there's a very good chance that the party's guests will sing, breaking the "no singing at gatherings" restriction if it hasn't been broken already.

Finally, a dice roll determines whether or not the party was successfully covered up. A covered-up party earns the group a higher score and allows the game to continue, while an exposed party gets a small score and ends the game. The score earned from a covered-up party is the number of attendees multiplied by the number of restrictions broken. However, in order to cover up the party, the result of the dice roll must be at least as high as the number of attendees, and each restriction that was broken reduces the number of dice in the roll by one. Break too many restrictions, and you won't have enough dice to cover the number of attendees. Break too few, and you'll get a small score from this party. Play it risky in the middle, and if it pays off you'll earn big points.

 

The Down-in-one Street characters partying while ironically wearing masks

Scoring

Down-in-one Street's most unique feature is its scoring system. Rather than having players simply aim for a high score, the objective is to get a high score in as few rounds (called "lockdowns") as possible. This creates a talking point amongst groups of players that doesn't exist in most games. So rather than:

"We scored 200, what about you?"
"You did much better, we got 150."

...you get:

"We scored 200 in 3 lockdowns, how did you do?"
"Ah, we only got 150 but we did it in 1 lockdown."
"Wow, well played! Yeah we played it quite safe in the first two lockdowns then blew it in the third."
"We managed to get one really good party that bumped the score up, we thought we'd lost it but we got a decent dice roll and had a couple of rerolls so we just scraped through to the next party."

The more the merrier