YOUR FIRST NIGHT

A new run starts on THE BLOCK — your house, one corner and the eight streets around it. The rest of the city is boarded up and dark until it opens: the three fighting bosses' districts appear on your map the first night their cars come out for you, and THE DOCKS open once you are holding enough corners for the harbour to notice you. A short guided first shift walks you through your first four moves; you can skip it, and switch it back on in Options.

THE IDEA

You run a crew out of one house in the middle of a neon city. Every corner has a racket. Send people to a corner and it earns. Take more corners and you earn more — and have more to hold. Three of the four bosses will come for what's yours. The fourth just takes her cut.

EVERY MORNING, EVERY NIGHT

The clock pauses at 06:00 and 22:00. Tap a crew chip along the bottom, then tap a corner — or drag the chip onto it. Day rackets (protection, numbers, chop shop) earn in daylight. Night rackets (nightclub, smuggling, casino) earn far more after dark — but night is when the rivals push. Crew that never come home get exhausted and work at 60 %.

THE SIX ROLES

HUSTLER earns. MUSCLE wins scraps and takes corners. LOOKOUT bleeds heat off a corner and its neighbours. DRIVER gets everyone there in minutes, gets them out of a raid, and makes smuggling and chop shops pay. FIXER stays in the office and turns cash into favours — cheap bail, cooling a corner, a truce. SNITCH is the only one you send to somebody else's corner on their own — see below.

THE SNITCH

Send a snitch alone onto a rival corner and they are planted: no scrap starts, they just stand there being nobody. While they're inside, that corner defends at half strength — walk your muscle in behind them and it falls twice as fast. You also get word from inside: the name of the very corner that boss is going to hit next, hours before the car turns up. Snitches never fight. They do get made — the odds get worse in a boss's own HQ and worse again when they're exhausted, so bring them home now and then.

THE AWKWARD RACKETS

A 🎰 CASINO is the biggest night in the city and it runs hot fast — and if there is no muscle standing over the floor, the floor keeps most of it. A 🧺 LAUNDROMAT earns you nothing, ever: it washes heat off itself and all four corners around it, every hour, all day and all night. Park one in the middle of your hottest block. 📦 SMUGGLING needs a driver, 🔧 CHOP SHOPS pay a driver extra.

THE BOOK AND FIGHT NIGHT

A 🥊 BOOKIE ticks over quietly all day — until there is a card. Word of a fight goes round at dawn; from 15:00 to 21:00 the whole city bets through every book in it and yours takes three times its usual money. Then at 21:00 the result comes in. If the favourite holds, you keep a cut on top of the night's takings. If he goes down, the book pays out of your own pocket — it is the only corner in this city that can take money off you. Stand MUSCLE on a book before the result and the fight gets fixed and almost never upsets; a fixed fight is loud, though, and loud is heat.

WHAT YOU BUILD ONTO THE HOUSE

Open THE HOUSE and there is a BUILD list. BUNKS make room on the payroll; a GARAGE puts everyone in a car; a SAFE means a raid takes no cash and the house holds an extra door. Then there is THE BAR — an annex out the side: anybody resting gets their legs back half again as fast, and one extra face turns up on the recruit slate every morning. THE LAWYER puts a shingle on the wall: bail is a third cheaper, nobody sits more than two days, and one of whoever the cops take walks before the wagon leaves. The LOOKOUT POST puts somebody on the roof with eyes on the whole of THE BLOCK — every corner on the block runs cool for nothing, which frees your lookout to work anywhere else. All three go up on the house where you can see them.

WORK SOMEBODY PUTS YOUR WAY

People on the block want small things done and they pay cash for them. An offer turns up in daylight — a car outside the house, a marker on the corner it is about — and sits there for a few hours. Open THE HOUSE and take it or leave it; walking away costs nothing, but taking one and dropping it means nobody asks again for a couple of days. There are five kinds. A SIT: keep somebody standing on a corner of yours, and keep the corner. A RUN: get a DRIVER onto a named corner before the clock runs out — nobody else will do. A NAME: plant a SNITCH inside a rival corner and leave them in there. A MESSAGE: take a named corner off whoever is standing on it — and you keep it afterwards. A QUIET NIGHT: get the heat on one of your hot corners back under the line — an owned corner earns a trickle even when nobody is on it, so this one is won with a LAUNDROMAT next door or the FIXER's money, not by waiting. Every job you deliver makes the next one worth more.

SOMEBODY IS TALKING

Later in a run a boss will buy one of your own. You never learn who. What you get is a car that goes past the house at night and doesn't stop, your SNITCH tip-offs going quiet, and that boss's next push landing on your thinnest corner instead of a random one. The house button turns red while it lasts. Pay the FIXER to find the leak, or wait for them to lose their nerve.

NIGHTS THE CITY HAS ITS OWN IDEAS

Some mornings word goes round that there is a CRACKDOWN coming. From 22:00 to 06:00 that night every corner you work runs twice as hot and raids come far more often — the clock chip up top turns red so you know. Pull people off anything already warm, lean on lookouts and laundromats, or just take the night off; the cops are out either way, and you will see them go past. Some nights instead the bosses go for each other: two whose turf touches spend the night on their own border, and whatever they drop goes loose — corners nobody owns, sitting there for you.

THE HARBOUR'S CUT

SOFIA KROON runs THE DOCKS and she is not like the others: she never pushes a corner and she never comes for the house. She takes a slice — 30 %, and more as the city hardens — of every smuggling payout in the city and of anything you run on her docks, and a collector drives round in daylight to take it. Three answers: pay the fixer for a truce, plant a SNITCH on any corner she owns so the manifest gets cooked and she only gets half, or go and take her 👑 HQ. Give her nothing to collect and she spends the round putting another body on the docks instead.

HEAT

A corner that earns gets hot. Hot corners get raided: cops jail whoever's there, take a cut of your cash, and the corner goes cold. Rotate people, post lookouts, or pay the fixer to cool it.

TAKING A CORNER

Send muscle to a corner that isn't yours. They scrap once an hour until the defenders are gone. Take a boss's 👑 HQ and that boss is done. Take all four and you're the king of the city — then hold it.

LOSING

Rivals push your corners at night; nobody there means it's gone. Every few nights one of the three fighting bosses comes for the house — whoever is home holds the door. Lose every door and it's over. Hospital and jail are temporary; unpaid crew walk.

CONTROLS

Tap / click everything. Drag to pan, wheel or pinch to zoom. SPACE pause · 1/2/3 speed · H house · ESC close / pause · M mute. Saves itself every few seconds.