The game, in plain English

How it works

Comment your city on an @canadabrickbybrick post and get a house on the map. Your @ and your city are public by default. The game is for people 18 and older.

One person, one house

Comment your city on one of our posts to build your house and get 10 starting points. Keep it simple: just the city, or the city and province, like “Halifax”, “Kelowna, BC” or “from Moncton NB”. A short lead-in like “I'm from” is fine. French names work with or without accents (“Montréal” or “Montreal”, “Trois-Rivières”), and so do “St.”, “St-” and “Saint”. The province can be its English or French name or its abbreviation, like “Montreal QC”. If the name exists in more than one province, like Windsor or Richmond, add the province: without it, the comment goes to manual review and creates no house until it's sorted out. Comment the city, not the neighbourhood: “Scarborough” or “Kitsilano” goes to review. Full sentences (“I love Halifax”, “my mom lives in Halifax”) and comments with two cities also go to review. You can also DM your city and province to @canadabrickbybrick. 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 provincial or national offices or in the provincial and national leaderboards. You can leave the island by commenting a real 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.

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.

1. Cottage: 0–19 total points.
2. Townhouse: 20–29.
3. Tall House: 30–44.
4. Mansion: 45–69.
5. Tower: 70–99.
6. Apartment Block: 100–139.
7. High-rise: 140–189.
8. Skyscraper: 190–249.
9. Glass Tower: 250–329.
10. Helipad Tower: 330–429.
11. Luxury Tower: 430–559.
12. Megatower: 560–719.
13. Golden Tower: 720–919.
14. Diamond Tower: 920–1,199.
15. 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 provinces and territories can have 1 Premier, its Senators (from 1 in each territory to 24 in Ontario and Quebec, 105 Senators in total) and its seats in the House of Commons: up to 122 Members of Parliament (MPs) per province, 343 in total, following the 2023 federal redistribution.

The national race, for 1 Prime Minister, is also open from day one, with no minimum number of players or provinces and territories. 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, Premier, Senator, 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 9 p.m. ET (Eastern Time, Toronto, with daylight saving time); the map also shows it in your own time zone. At 9 p.m. ET 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 @canadabrickbybrick 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”. Province and territory abbreviations (“NS”, “YT”), 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 @canadabrickbybrick.

Privacy and leaving the game

The game is for adults (18+). If someone tells us they're under 18, 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 @canadabrickbybrick 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.