A round
Everybody is drawing at the same time
You are dealt a line nobody else can see — a scene, three shapes and one joke — and you draw it. So is everybody else, on their own line, at the same moment. The round ends when the last pad is handed in or when the clock stops, whichever comes first.
Then every pad moves one seat. What you are handed is one drawing and nothing else: not the line it was made from, not what anybody wrote before, not one mark off any other pad. You write down what you think it is, and that is what the next person has to draw.
The fold in the paper is the game
In the version played with a pencil you fold the sheet over so the next person can only see the last thing on it. Here the fold is the projection: exactly one link reaches your screen and the rest of the chain is not in the message. That is checked rather than asserted — every seat's view of every state in a whole match is searched, in the test suite, for anything it should not be holding.
A pad never comes back to somebody who has already written on it, so nobody is ever asked to draw their own handwriting.
Then it is all read out
One pad at a time, from the card it started on down to whatever came out of the far end, with the exact link where it stopped being the same thing marked. This is the part people stay on the call for, and it is why the scoreboard is empty until it starts: a table that could see the totals first has been told the ending.
Two points every time a drawing of yours is read back as the line it was made from, and one every time you read somebody else's right. The person who can draw and the person who can guess are worth the same, and neither is worth anything on their own.
On the sheet
Questions people ask
Do I need to be able to draw?
Less than in any other drawing game, because nobody has to guess your drawing under a clock with four other people shouting. One person looks at it, on their own, and writes down what they think it is — and if they get it wrong, that is the game working rather than you failing.
How long does it actually take?
Six rounds at most, whatever the size of the table, and the table sets how long a drawing round runs — 45, 75 or 110 seconds. Six people at the middle setting is about eight minutes of drawing and five of reading the pads out. It is a promise the lobby prints before you start rather than a guess.
What if somebody just writes the word on the pad?
Nothing stops them and nothing needs to. It is a room of colleagues on a coffee break; if somebody writes it, their chain comes home and it is the dullest one on the table. The table will tell them so.
What happens if I run out of time?
Whatever is on the pad is what the next person gets, half-finished and all. A blank pad is allowed too and the chain says so — nothing is skipped, because a pad that quietly missed a round is a reveal that does not add up.
Can I play it on my own?
No, and it is the third game here with no machine to play against. A stand-in can neither draw a thing nor look at one and say what it is, and here it would have to do both every round on somebody else's pad.
Does anybody have to install anything to play Down the Line?
No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.
Do we need accounts?
No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.
How many people can play Down the Line?
3 to 8 — best with six. A room seats up to 12.
How long does a game of Down the Line take?
About 15 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.
Does it work over a video call?
That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.
Credit where it is due
Adapted from the parlour game played with a pad and a pencil, which has no designer and no publisher. The deck, the scoring and everything else here are our own.