City of Gangsters is a turn-based mafia management game set in the U.S. during the time of prohibition. The game focuses on the relationships between the people who live in a single city, influencing each other and the player. By treating people you meet with respect and trading with them, you gain useful favours that benefit your empire directly or open up new doors for expansion. Almost everything you do is illegal, convincing people to join your criminal empire requires developing trust.
From Humble Beginnings
You start out with a car, an extended family and a warehouse full of illegal alcohol. Family will help you find people who would buy your stock, earnings from sales help you set up a production facility in the warehouse and selling your produced booze to the same clients increases their opinion of you so they will help you find even more people interested in buying your less-than-legal produce. That simple loop is the backbone of the entire game and in which you will be spending the vast majority of your time.
As with all things, life is not as simple as that loop. To produce anything in your backroom enterprises, you need a stable source of raw materials. Depending on what you wish to produce, the difficulty of finding someone who would sell you hops, bottles, crocks, grapes or whatever else you need may vary from driving down the block to spending a month venturing out into the distant parts of the city. As a newcomer to the town, you are not even told where you might find grocery stores or other legal businesses, you have to explore the city on your own. Since each character in your crew has a very limited amount of actions each turn, a turn representing a period of five days, balancing your priorities becomes a delicate task. In time, you can upgrade your illegal businesses to use less or different materials to produce more or different goods. You can even set up your own speakeasies to sell your produce directly to the consumers.
Every single transaction you make has multiple effects. People like other people who help them earn money so trades boost relationships. Transactions, where illegal goods are involved, can also increase police activity in the area. The last thing you need is a truck full of your finest moonshine getting confiscated and your driver arrested during a routine delivery. Policemen who dislike you are not likely to accept bribes, either. Having satisfied clients means they may be willing to recommend you to their friends, opening up new markets where to sell your ever-expanding variety of illicit goods. Sometimes they will take requests from you and reward you with money, free resources, or even teaching you new skills to improve your current industries or expand your product line. Growing your empire means making friends, increasing your influence, attending secret dinner parties, recruiting business managers, delivery men, muscle, managing your production and sales, and keeping an eye on local hooligans and other criminal organizations. Recruit them if you want, bribe them if you can, fight them if you have to.
Greatness Awaits?
While the game so far has all the hallmarks of a Gangsters: Organised Crime game, I found myself comparing it more to the likes of Patrician. Fighting is an option, but at the core of the game is trading. Much like Patrician, the more influence you grow, the more options open up to you to earn more money. Conversely, the more you earn, the more options open up to grow your influence. I found the early game very interesting and it definitely offers a lot of replayability. Unfortunately the mid- and late game are currently very much works in progress. Even the user interface is in dire need of extra work – not only is it impossible to see everything you want to in a single view, a lot of information is hidden in menus and extra overlays that should probably be constantly displayed.
In this sense, City of Gangster’s development seems to resemble the game itself. Because you have dozens of options for what you want to do, you keep starting mini-projects. But instead of setting up a brick wine industry, you take on procedural map generation with era-accurate nationality distribution. Instead of adding a truck garage to extend your motor pool, you make poker night quest line mechanics. While I sincerely appreciate the level of detail added to the game and I do believe the best games are made when the developers get to enjoy working on the project, I am left to wonder what the future roadmap entails. How much new development is spontaneous, how much is planned? It is exactly the kind of game you could keep adding content to without it ever being finished. Not just new locations, goods, and vehicles, but also novel mechanics, special events, etc. Politics and policing are so far criminally underused facets of the mafia setting and I hope they gain a lot more depth. Alas, currently the only confirmed future feature that I could find is being able to smuggle illegal goods into town. It is a challenge to make a game of this complexity with a small team and this is why a specific roadmap or a list of planned features would be useful both for the team and the players alike.
Conclusion
There are a lot of things I enjoy about City of Gangsters, but as it stands now, there is a lot missing. It is slated to release Q3 2021 and while that gives enough time to add new features and fill in the placeholder content, making sure everything works without major bugs or balance issues also requires dedicated time. Development is currently in high gear, feedback is actively being responded to and new features roll out almost on a weekly basis. For what it is worth, each update feels very solid in its own right and the game runs very smoothly, somewhat helped by relatively simple 3D models and mostly icon-based visual style. This could become a fantastic game by the time of release, but it is far too early to call a verdict now. Personally, I am cautiously optimistic about City of Gangsters and will keep an eye on it’s development.
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