The game, in plain English
How it works
Comment your town or city on an @ukbrickbybrick post and get a house on the map. Your @ and your town are public by default. The game is for people 13 and older.
One person, one house
Comment your town or city on one of our posts to build your house and get 10 starting points. Keep it simple: just the place, or the place and its county or nation, like “Leeds”, “Bath, Somerset”, “Cardiff Wales” or “from Glasgow Scotland”. A short lead-in like “I'm from” is fine. Welsh, Gaelic and Irish names work with or without accents (“Caerdydd”, “Dùn Èideann” or “Dun Eideann”, “Béal Feirste”), and so do “St”, “St.” and “Saint”, or “upon”, “on” and “-on-”. London is one city: a borough like “Hackney” or “Croydon” counts as London. If the name exists in more than one place, like Newport or Richmond, add the county or the nation: without it, the comment goes to manual review and creates no house until it's sorted out. Comment the town, not the neighbourhood: a district inside a town goes to review. Full sentences (“I love Leeds”, “my mum lives in Leeds”) and comments with two places also go to review. You can also DM your town or city and region to @ukbrickbybrick. DMs also work for data requests and support.
Your house is tied to your account, even if you change your @. Your city choice stays open for about 15 minutes: another clear city in that time replaces it. While the choice is open, the house shows on the map without the crown. Once the choice closes on a real city, it's final. Only the team can fix a mistake. Those 15 minutes are only for picking your city. The Sunday close has its own grace period, below. The founder is the first settled, active house in a city. The founder badge gives no points. If the founder is suspended, is hidden as a minor, asks for deletion or has their account deleted, the badge passes to the next person.
The island
Comment just “city”, or another accepted phrase like “my city” or “the city”, and your house goes to a fictional island. The island has a Mayor, Councillors and a founder, but it doesn't take part in regional or national offices or in the regional and national leaderboards. You can leave the island by commenting a real town or city, without building another house or getting another starting bonus.
Points and limits
The numbers below are the current values of rules version 3. Total points grow your house; this week's points decide offices.
| Action | Points and limit |
|---|---|
| Build your house | +10, limit 1 per person. |
| Comment on a post | +5, limit 1 per person per post. |
| Extra comments | Don't add up. Only each person's first valid comment on each post scores; commenting again on the same post, or replying, is worth 0. |
| Tag someone | +3 for each different person you tag who's already in the game, up to 10 per post. Tagging someone who hasn't commented on any post yet gives no tag points, but can earn the recruiting bonus. Tagging yourself or our page doesn't count. |
| Recruit a neighbour | +25 to the first person who tagged them in a comment before they joined. Tags in DMs or stories don't count. If that person can't receive it at close, no one does. Limit 1 per recruited person. |
| Get a vote | +5 to whoever gets it. 1 counted vote per person per post. Up to 3 scored votes from the same voter to the same person each week. |
| Visit a shop on the map | +100, 1 time per person per shop. Tap a sponsored shop on the map, then “Earn 100 points”, and DM its code (like “SHOP SHOPNAME”) to @ukbrickbybrick. You need a house on the map. Following the shop is an invitation, not a condition. Only shops that show “Earn 100 points” count. |
| Mention our page in a story | +30, 1 time per person per day (UK time, by the day the story was posted). Post a story tagging @ukbrickbybrick. You need a house on the map, already settled after picking your city. Other mentions on the same day don't add up. Stories don't create houses, tag people or record votes. |
To vote, comment “vote @neighbour_test” on one of our posts (made-up example). “vote for @neighbour_test”, “voting for @neighbour_test”, “my vote is @neighbour_test”, “my vote goes to @neighbour_test” and “@neighbour_test vote” work too; “votes” and “voted” don't. Voting for yourself gives no points and uses up your vote on that post. Voting for someone who left, is a minor or was deleted also gives no points and uses up your vote on that post. Past the limit for the same voter and person, the vote gives no points and doesn't use up the post: you can still vote for someone else on it. Trading votes counts both ways, within that limit, each week, and doesn't cost anyone an office. A tag left out of the paid tags on a post can still earn the recruiting bonus. If the week the house was built has closed and the grace period is over, the +25 counts only toward the total, not the week. Follower count gives no points.
Deleting a comment we've already processed doesn't take the points back. Editing doesn't give another +5. The number of comments, on its own, doesn't suspend your account or take your house off the map. Repeated comments don't add extra points and may be hidden under the moderation policy below. An automatic fraud flag doesn't take points away, doesn't suspend anyone and doesn't remove an office. Only the team, with proof, can keep someone out of an office. Taking points away is a team decision and can lower the house level.
From cottage to the top of the map
Your house grows with your total points, level by level. It never shrinks on its own; only a team correction can lower the level.
- Cottage: 0–19 total points.
- Townhouse: 20–29.
- Tall House: 30–44.
- Mansion: 45–69.
- Tower: 70–99.
- Apartment Block: 100–139.
- High-rise: 140–189.
- Skyscraper: 190–249.
- Glass Tower: 250–329.
- Helipad Tower: 330–429.
- Luxury Tower: 430–559.
- Megatower: 560–719.
- Golden Tower: 720–919.
- Diamond Tower: 920–1,199.
- Top of the Map: 1,200 or more.
Every office in the game
Offices are symbolic and exist only inside the game. All of them are open, with no minimum number of players. Each city can have 1 Mayor and up to 20 Councillors. Each of the regions and nations can have 1 Regional Leader (called First Minister in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, Mayor of London in London and Regional Mayor in the other English regions), 2 Peers (24 in total) and its seats in the House of Commons: up to 91 MPs per region, 650 in total, following the 2023 Boundary Review. The real House of Lords isn't elected or regional: in the game, two Peers for each region and nation is a game rule.
The national race, for 1 Prime Minister, is also open from day one, with no minimum number of players or regions and nations. Seats with no eligible candidates stay empty. When a term closes, that week's Prime Minister goes up in the Hall of Prime Ministers and stays there.
To hold an office you need an active, settled house and at least 1 point this week. Each person holds only one office, the first one they reach in this order: Prime Minister, Regional Leader, Peer, Member of Parliament, Mayor and Councillor. Whoever moves up opens the seat below; seats with no eligible people stay empty.
The most points this week wins. On a tie, the older house wins. If it's still tied, an internal code decides the order. That code doesn't appear on the map. Tied points don't share a seat.
Weekly term
Offices change live as the map files update, aiming for every 5 minutes. Terms close Sunday at 9 pm UK time (London time: GMT in winter, BST in summer); the map also shows it in your own time zone. At 9 pm UK time the new week starts; total points and your house level carry over.
There's a 15-minute grace period to receive actions made before the close and lock in the official result. Older actions that arrive after the grace period count toward the total, but don't change the closed result or score in the new week. “Day N” in our videos is an editorial round, not the start of a new term.
Hidden comments
To keep posts from turning into a flood, we automatically hide, on @ukbrickbybrick posts:
- the second comment onwards with the same text, from the same person, on the same post, even if the text is a city (capital letters and accents don't count as a difference);
- comments with only emoji or punctuation, or with one to three letters or numbers, like “lol” or “hi”. Region abbreviations (“NI”, “LN”), town and city names and mentions (@) aren't covered by this rule.
We never hide the comment that created your house or the first comment with each text. The rule only looks at repetition and length, not opinion: criticism isn't hidden.
Hiding isn't deleting. The comment stays visible to the person who wrote it. Think we hid something by mistake? DM @ukbrickbybrick.
Put your business on the map
Businesses can get a sponsored building on the map for 10 days, paid in USDT (TRC-20 only). See the Terms and the Privacy Policy before you order.
Privacy and leaving the game
The game is for people aged 13 and over. If someone tells us they're under 13, we don't give them a house, and we delete their comment text and @ from our database within minutes. We also ask Instagram to hide the comments of theirs we had already read on our posts, so only they and our page can see them. To ask for deletion, email [email protected] or DM @ukbrickbybrick from your own account with “delete my data”, or comment it on one of our posts to flag the request for our team. A parent or guardian can ask as described in the deletion instructions. Anyone who asked for deletion, or whose account Instagram deleted, doesn't come back. The internal record, the effects and the timeline are on that page; learn more in the Privacy Policy.