Elevator Up and Fourth Down Games Review

If you like football or elevators, and are also looking for fun family games, then you’ll enjoy the two new card games Fourth Down and Elevator Up. They may have different names and card designs, but their gameplay is actually the same.

For either game, you’ll need two to five players ages 7 and up. Each player gets three cards dealt face down, then two cards dealt face up, and then three cards for their hand. After this, players can swap one, both, or no face up cards with cards from their hand. The object of this game is to be the first player out of cards. 

There are three phases of play. In the first phase, you must discard a card from your hand that’s either equal or higher than the previously played card or a Special card. If you can’t play anything, you have to add the entire discard pile to your hand. 

In Fourth Down, Special cards include Touchdown, Interception, Timeout, and Fumble. In Elevator Up, these cards include Penthouse, New Building, Lobby, Stuck, and Door Closed. These all have special abilities, such as removing the entire discard pile from gameplay or skipping the next player’s turn. 

Once the deck runs out, you enter phase two. You play the rest of the cards in your hand, using the face up cards as your hand, but keeping them on the table. And once you get rid of your face up cards, you enter phase three, where you play your face down cards. But you still don’t get to look at them until you flip one over onto the discard pile. If your card is not equal or higher than the previously played card or a Special card, you have to add the entire discard pile to your hand. Then you have to go back to playing cards from your hand before you can play any more face down cards. The first player to play all of his cards first wins.