D-nup? Dun-up? Dnup? We pronounce it “dun-up” here but I’m unsure if there’s an official ruling on it. Pronunciation aside, let’s take a look inside the box of this quick and colourful card game!
Introduction
dnup is a ladder climbing/card shedding game – mechanics you might have seen in games like Scout, Velonimo or Go Big. I’ll be honest and say when I got more seriously into games, the idea of “ladder climbing” games was something that I politely nodded along to without really feeling confident enough to ask what it was. If that’s you right now, it essentially means “I play some combination of cards and you have to play a better combination on your turn”. That’s it. In dnup this is done a quickfire way that can mean whole games last two rounds.
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To begin, you set the deck based on your player count – there are symbols on the sides that tell you whether cards are needed for 3, 4 or 5 -player games – and then you deal cards out equally to everyone. Players are free to rearrange the order their cards are in, but not the orientation. Each card has a different value depending on which way up it is (and helpfully, a reminder of the other value printed in a smaller font below so you know your card that’s currently a 5 is also a 1 if rotated 180 degrees). The player with the 1/5 card marked with a star always goes first.
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On your turn you can take one of four possible actions:
1. Play a set to the table
2. Add a single card from your hand to someone else’s already-played set
3. Pick up someone else's already played set
4. Rotate your entire hand 180 degrees to have the alternate numbers now in play
Playing a set has two conditions – it must be at least one card (easy enough) and it must beat any set on the table with the same number of cards in it. For example, if you’ve started out strong be playing 777, I can still play 33 because my set only has two cards to your three. The kicker here is if someone has previously played a lower set, they have to return those cards to their hand, rotating them 180 degrees in the process. So if my 33 beat your 22 – sorry but rotate them and put them back in your hand
Adding a single card to another set is an action that doesn’t seem overly powerful, but it can have some interesting repercussions. Firstly, you’ve shed one of your cards so that’s good. Secondly, if adding that card causes the set to now be the best on the table, the owner of the beaten set has to… yep, you guessed it… pick them up, rotate them and add them to their hand. Let’s say you played 55, I played a solitary 6, and our third player (we’ll call her Abbie) can’t (or doesn’t want to) beat any set on the table, so instead adds a 6 from her hand to my 6. Your 5s are heading back to your hand, albeit upside down.
Picking up someone else’s cards definitely seems the most ridiculous action. We’re trying to get rid of cards, not pick them up right? Well, unsurprisingly, if you pick someone else’s set up, you have to rotate it as you put it back in your hand. So taking their 2s might feel rubbish, but if it’s going to let you play three 8s on your next turn it could well be worth it. Use this one wisely I’d say.
The final action – rotating your entire hand – is essentially a catch-all. If you can’t (don’t want to…) do any of the other three, then you can flip your cards and try again next time.
If, when your turn comes around again, you’ve managed to keep your set in front of you, those cards are discarded out of the round and you take one of the four actions, again trying to beat whatever’s already on the table
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This can sometimes all go quite quickly, and other times it’s a sneakier, tactical battle to keep someone in the game. Adding a card to a rival’s set might not get rid of the most cards from your hand, but it could force someone else to pick back up, slowing them down a little.
The first player to get rid of all their cards wins the round and takes two of the fun little tokens that will help you spell out “dnup”. Everyone else plays for second place and a single token. The cards for the winning player stay on the table until it would be their turn again. If they get beat by another set in the interim, they get discarded instead of returned, otherwise they’re discarded as usual when it would get back to their turn.
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Getting four tokens to spell “dnup” wins you the game, so you can see that there’s the potential for it to be over almost before it’s even begun if someone hits that magical combo of luck and skill and wins back-to-back rounds.
There’s also a more intriguing possibility which is everyone goes into a round with two tokens and it becomes a winner-takes-all fight. The middle ground (which I may or may not have experienced) where everyone can win but you is a bit like playing for fun, but it does present opportunities to be kingmaker which will make you simultaneously popular and loathed.
Final thoughts
This is a 10/10 for us as a family. We picked it up in Seville of all places while we were on holiday and it became a travel staple, as well as making into the bag for coffee shop visits since we got home.
It’s one of those games where everyone gets completely locked in and plays in near-silence – occasionally mentioning they’ve had to rotate their cards but that’s it. I imagine to the casual observer it looks completely alien and without real rhyme or reason, but I think that’s when we know we’re in the zone. Everyone understands the rules because it’s so simple, everyone knows what they’re doing it becomes this blur of cards being put down, discarded and taken back.
If you’re looking for a ‘criticism’ then… I don’t know… there’s no provided small bag to keep the dnup tokens in so after having had a mild panic I’d lost one on a cruise ship, I rectified that almost immediately (I hadn’t). But really I don’t have a bad word to say about it. Bright, easy, quick and fun, with the perfect sprinkling of player interaction/take that to it. A definite family fave for us!
