You do not have to read any of this. Start a new game and THE FIRST NIGHT will walk you through the still, the door, the flat next door and the cellar one step at a time, asking you to do each thing rather than describing it. What follows is the reference, for when you want it. (Options → GUIDE THE FIRST NIGHT turns it off, or back on.)

TWO NUMBERS

REP is how you grow: it brings recruits and work to the door and unlocks the next tier. Reach SYNDICATE and the block is yours. HEAT never ends the game by itself — it decides who knocks. Almost everything that earns rep makes heat; almost everything that cools heat costs rep. That is the whole game.

THE DOOR

When the door glows, someone is on the step: a recruit, a client, a fence, a rival's envoy — or a cop, a detective. Tap the door (or the 🚪 KNOCK button) and choose. Every knock has a timer. Ignoring the door is also a choice: the cop notices, the recruit walks to a rival.

ROOMS

Tap a room to see it. Tap a room with a green $ bubble to collect. Drag a person from the crew bar (or straight out of a room) onto a room to put them to work — a matching stat (💪🧠🎩🕶🎲) earns more. The accountant turns dirty cash into clean cash; the lawyer bleeds heat; a pawn shop on the ground floor cuts the whole block's heat but caps that floor's earnings.

THE BUILDING

Tap a tenant's apartment next to one you own: buy it (clean cash, no heat) or take it over (cheap, a little rep, a lot of heat). Then renovate the shell into a room. Idle muscle speeds up the contractors.

WHAT IS NEXT DOOR

Rooms react to their neighbours, so the floor plan is a puzzle and not a list. A print shop or a still beside an air shaft makes far less heat; a casino beside a speakeasy bar earns a third more; a chop shop beside a smuggling tunnel never touches the street. It cuts both ways — nobody sleeps in bunks next to a casino or a press. Green ▲ and red ▼ badges on a shared wall show it happening, the room's own panel lists every one, and the renovation menu tells you what a room would gain before you build it.

THE CELLAR AND THE ROOF

The block is three zones, and two of them are not apartments. Below the road is THE CELLAR: tap the solid earth under a room you own and dig it out — it costs no heat at all, because nobody sees a shovel. Work down there makes 30% less heat, and the cellar is the only place you can build a stash room (money in the stash is not there when they raid you) or a smuggling tunnel (a stealth earner, and a way out when the door comes off). Above the top floor is THE ROOF: tap the bare tar above a floor you own and clear it. Everything up there is 20% more visible from the street, but a staffed lookout post whistles before a raid arrives and buys you extra seconds every time the law knocks, and a staffed radio room on the precinct band hears it called even earlier. Press F to frame the whole building, cellar to roof.

WHO IS REALLY ON THE STEP

Once the precinct is interested in you, some of the people knocking are theirs. A recruit can be an undercover officer; a client with cash in hand can be a sting. Nothing on the outside tells them apart — but if you have a 🎩 charm hand working the pawn shop counter, or anyone paranoid or cautious in the crew, the door gets a 🔎 CHECK WHO THEY ARE button. It costs you seconds off the clock and it is not a certainty: it either makes them, clears them, or turns up nothing at all — which is not the same as nothing being there. A cautious hand will sometimes say something before you even ask. Once you have made one, shut the door on them (a little heat) or feed them a story (a real drop in heat, paid for in rep). Sign a plant by mistake and nobody tells you: the dial simply starts climbing on its own, they never get unhappy no matter what you do, and sooner or later somebody knocks wanting money for the name. Buy it. A plant still inside when the raid comes knows exactly where the stash is.

THE STREET

Tap one of your people and SEND THEM OUT: ⚓ THE DOCKS to the west, 🧺 THE MARKET to the east, and 🎩 UPTOWN beyond it once you are an OUTFIT. The camera follows them down a real street — press P to jump to them at any time. A few times on the walk they will stop in front of something: a lorry with its tailgate down, a night watchman with a lamp, a lit window over a drainpipe. The clock over their head is running: point at the thing you want them to do. Every choice pays in one of three currencies — money, people who saw it, or nothing at all — and the safest option is usually the one carrying no money. Let the clock run out and they stand there in the lamplight, which is its own answer. Whoever you send matters: a route has a stat (💪 docks, 🎩 market, 🕶 uptown) and a matching hand brings back more and gets caught less. While they are out they work no room, the kitchen does not reach them and the police cannot take them in a raid — but wages still come out of the till. They walk back in with the money, the rep and the heat, and if four or more people saw them, one of those people knocks on your door wanting paying.

TOO MANY PEOPLE TO MOVE BY HAND

Press ⚙ ASSIGN (or A) and every idle hand goes where it is needed most: the front counter, the lawyer once the beat cops are knocking and the kitchen once somebody's loyalty sags (never more than half your people), then exact stat matches and the biggest earners, cellar and roof included. It never moves anybody you placed yourself.

THE CREW

Everyone has one stat and one trait. Greedy earns more and wants double wages. Loyal never rats. Paranoid makes less heat but frays when heat is high. Cautious earns a little less but is the best pair of eyes you have at the door. Connected knows everybody: while they are on the payroll the door brings more work and fewer badges. Nimble brings a quarter more back off a prowl and is far harder to catch out there. And an 🥊 athletic club is the one room that improves a person — whoever works it climbs a level every day or so, up to five. Payroll comes every 20 hours — miss it and loyalty drains. Below 20 loyalty somebody RATS: pay them off or cut them loose, fast, because a raid with a rat in the house is an indictment.

TWENTY ROOMS

Beyond the earners there are rooms that only make sense next to other rooms. A 🔢 numbers room takes penny bets off the whole neighbourhood and does far better beside a bar. A 🧼 steam laundry is a second street front — a detective believes it, it washes a little money on its own, and unlike a pawn shop it does not cap what the ground floor earns. A 🔥 furnace room in the cellar burns heat off the block and burns dirty cash doing it, and stops the moment there is nothing left to burn. A 🕊 pigeon loft on the roof means two fewer people remember your prowler's face.

THE POLICE

Above ~30 heat the beat cop knocks: bribe him or hide the evidence (a stealth hand makes that safe). Above ~60 the detective comes: you need a staffed front and clean cash on hand, or a lawyer to talk. A staffed lookout post or radio room whistles before the dial tops out — that warning is the time you get to prepare.

THE RAID

At the top of the dial they come through the street door, and it is not a dice roll: it is two beats on a clock and then the search. On the step you can bar the door (a 💪 muscle hand holds it — less gets taken, and they take that hand away in the van), open it and be polite (they take more, they charge fewer people), or send everybody down the tunnel if one is staffed (nobody gets caught, nobody hides the money). Once they are inside you get one more thing: everything loose into the hole if you built a stash (it holds twice as much when somebody fills it), burn the books if you have an accountant or a press (half the reputation damage, but the clean money loses the paper that made it clean), over the roofs if you hold anything up there (one more person away, and the whole street watches them go), or stand in the doorways. Let either clock run out and you have answered anyway — badly.

CONTROLS

Tap / click everything. Drag to pan, wheel or pinch to zoom. SPACE pause · 1/2/3 speed · D door · P whoever is out on the street · A auto-assign · F frame the whole building · ESC close / pause · M mute. Saves itself.