How it works

You arrive in a real neighbourhood of a real city with a few hundred in your pocket and no name. The neighbourhood comes to you: a parcel that needs dropping off, a scooter that wasn't locked, someone who needs a lookout for an hour. Small things, little risk. That's why you say yes.

The first three ranks teach you the trade. You don't have to do them in this order, but this is how it usually goes.

Jobs take real time. You walk, ride or drive there through the city at night, and on the way something happens: a police car on the corner, a witness who looks too long, a door that's locked after all. Then you choose: carry on, pay someone off or walk away. Every choice changes your odds, your loot and how hot your street gets.

Which jobs you see depends on where you are. A port city offers different work than a village, a villa district different work than an industrial estate. Some jobs go faster with more people or the right vehicle: steal a motorbike alone and it takes three times as long.

Careers

Your rank says how big you are; your careers say in what. Every day you can try a job from any career, and the game shows where your talent lies. You become what you do: smuggle a lot and you get slyer, and the slyer you are, the better you smuggle. Your first career opens at Street Urchin, the second at Hustler, the third at Lieutenant and the fourth at Godfather.

Heat is what the street knows about you right now. It builds per neighbourhood, per city and per country, and it cools: your neighbourhood within hours, your city within a day, your country over days or weeks. The barber, new clothes, a new phone or a while lying low make it go faster.

Your file is what justice keeps, and it almost never forgets. The thicker it gets, the bigger the chance of a raid. A raid on a grow room or lab takes the installation and the stock; the property itself stays yours.

Sometimes a real investigation runs against you. You never see numbers, only signs: a van that stays parked, a phone that clicks, someone asking too many questions. Too much heat across several countries puts you on a Most Wanted list, with checks at every border.

Layers protect you

The more people between you and the street, the less of what they tell the police reaches you. A dealer who talks can hurt his street boss; he can barely hurt you. Bribes help too: cheap in a corrupt country, expensive and risky where the rule of law is strong. Too hot anyway? Move to another city, another country, a place that doesn't extradite.

Every property can do one of two things. Rent it out and it brings in clean rent every round. Or use it yourself: as storage, a workshop, a place to hide, or with an installation built inside. A rented property is not available; a job that needs a property asks for one that's free.

Properties have no upkeep. Your staff are the cost, and they repair a broken window or the damage after an attack by themselves within a few rounds.

Grow rooms and labs

A grow room or lab is not a building you buy, but an installation you build inside a property you own and use yourself. The bigger the space, the more it makes, the more people it needs and the more it costs to set up. A quiet barn or farm in the countryside draws less attention than a storage unit in town; a big hall on an industrial estate draws more.

It unlocks step by step: a small grow room from Errand Boy; medium and large grow rooms together with the first XTC lab at Trader; meth later still. Be aware: as soon as production moves in, the property's value drops to about a third, for good. Smell, damage, traces.

Homes

A studio, a flat, a holiday cottage, a house or a villa: rent it out for clean money, or convert it into a grow room or XTC lab. Small homes from Errand Boy, a house or villa from Trader. Homes share a handyman, who looks after about ten in one city.

A business earns from customers. After wages there's profit, mostly clean, on the bank. And every business has exactly one shady side that really fits it: the car wash launders, the bar deals, the garage rings stolen cars. Nothing more. A hairdresser that runs guns would draw attention.

The bigger the place, the more people it needs. A hairdresser works with one to three; a casino with about twenty, in five kinds: croupiers, security, bar and service, the cage and floor managers.

In every business where people deal on the quiet (a bar, a night shop, a coffee shop, a club) you place one or two of your own dealers. They are part of your network, supplied by your courier like the rest.

Lending

A gambling hall, a currency exchange or a security company can lend money on the side. You set the pot yourself and take back what isn't out. Some never pay back; you send people to collect with reminders, seizures or by selling the debt on. Never violence against ordinary people.

Every property has places to fill: a minimum without which it doesn't run, and an optimum beyond which more people add nothing. Everyone you hire has three traits. Skill grows by working. Loyalty decides whether he stays silent when arrested. Greed decides whether some of the takings stick to his fingers.

Wages are fixed and follow skill. Pay well and people stay; underpay them and they walk, or talk to the wrong people.

The recruit page

One page for everyone you can hire. At the top: what you need right now, the empty places, in red where you're below the minimum, each with a Fill button. Below that: staff, your network, specialists and compagnons. Every candidate has a card with his picture, what he does, where, his wage and what he brings in. Filter and sort by skill, loyalty or role.

Simple jobs (service, bar, reception, harvest hands) come through a temp agency, cleaners through a cleaning company and guards through a security company. Own one yourself and staff hired through it cost a fifth less; one button moves all your existing staff of that kind over.

What your grow room or lab makes first sits in the property. At the start you take it out yourself and sell it. From Errand Boy you can set up a chain, and then it runs without you.

The packer is always needed: without packed product, the courier takes nothing, not even from a small box. The courier carries it in bulk to your dealers and brings their cash back to you. Without a courier, nothing reaches your dealers. Couriers keep a small cut, may skim when disloyal and can be intercepted; more dealers or longer distances need more couriers.

Dealers and runners

Dealers are your people in the network: supplied by your courier, each layer above them taking a small share. Runners are loose sellers on the street who aren't yours; you supply them yourself, by bringing it.

No grow room of your own? From Errand Boy you can buy bigger batches from producers in town and still run dealers. Buying is dearer than making it yourself; that's why sooner or later you build.

Between you and your dealers come layers of bosses. Every boss runs the layer below him, and keeps it in line with muscle: men on a fixed wage, heavier and more expensive the higher the boss. Muscle decides how many people a boss can hold together.

A street boss runs the dealers in a neighbourhood: one or two muscle, five dealers per muscle, ten at most, plus runners. You can only place one in a neighbourhood you have claimed, so the size of your network follows your territory. A city boss runs the street bosses of a city: two or three heavier muscle, four street bosses per muscle, twelve at most. Your city bosses you run yourself, with your own muscle: about three at Capo, six at Godfather.

Mutiny

Too little muscle and a layer starts to mutiny. Nobody leaves, but they pay less and less, and within about three days they keep everything themselves. Put enough muscle back and the payments recover. A boss can also take on HR: he recruits and fills the places in his own layer, so you don't have to hire everyone yourself.

Taking a whole city takes weeks, not days. Rivals take back weak layers.

Compagnons are criminals like you, with their own rank and career. They do jobs by themselves, get better and climb. You get only a small share: a tenth of their loot and a twentieth of their respect and experience. It's a grind, not a shortcut. They never buy property; they only work.

From Henchman you have two, growing to ten around Godfather. You do group jobs with them instead of with strangers, and a compagnon who has grown enough can become one of your street bosses.

Influence and territory

In every neighbourhood every party has influence, from 0 to 100. You get it from property there, muscle at that property, respect in your own city and successful jobs; without presence it slowly drains away. At 51 you claim the neighbourhood: protection money, better jobs, room for a street boss. The local families notice, and strike back where you're weak.

Your compagnons' jobs count as influence for you, in the neighbourhood where they do them. On the influence map you see per neighbourhood how much you have, who's in charge and where your compagnons are working, and from there you send one to where you want to grow.

Black money is cash: fast, invisible and risky. It can be stolen, seized and it raises questions the moment you buy something big with it. White money sits in the bank: slow, visible and taxed, but safe. Whoever wants to grow without being noticed turns one into the other. That's laundering: through a business with a laundering back room, through a notary who doesn't count, through companies that are only a letterbox.

Bookkeepers and the accountant

Bookkeepers keep the books of your businesses. Each one handles a fixed amount of work (two large businesses, four medium or eight small) and works from an office, four desks per office. Before you reach Trader you make do without; it costs you a few percent in mistakes and fines.

Clean profit pays profit tax: a quarter, stricter or looser depending on the country. Lowering it is the job of the accountant, not the bookkeepers. You can hire one once you have three bookkeepers; he takes one of the four desks and brings your tax down to fifteen percent. A holding in a tax haven takes it lower still. From twelve bookkeepers you need a second accountant.

Front men put a public face on what you own. When the taxman starts an investigation, you can come forward yourself, or let a front man take the blame.

Trade grows step by step. At Capo you ship your own production across a border for the first time, without a middleman and without his cut. Every five loads that arrive safely, a route grows one size; a seizure sets it back a step.

A route needs a foothold at both ends: in the city it leaves from and the city it arrives in, a neighbourhood with influence (25 or more). The biggest loads need a claimed neighbourhood on both sides.

Between Schengen countries there's free movement by road: no border check, only the odd police stop on the way. A border tunnel only pays off under a land border from a poor country into a rich one, where the border is heavily guarded and digging is worth it.

Crypto is your third kind of money, next to cash and the bank. Its big advantage: you pay a supplier on the other side of the world without shipping a suitcase of cash. Pay for an import in crypto and there's no money on the road to intercept.

The rate moves a few percent a day, now and then a lot. Whoever holds crypto can win or lose. From Capo a middleman converts it for you, for a cut; your own crypto mine makes it itself. Cashing out big amounts gets you noticed; from Boss a mixer wipes most of the trail, at a price.

All crypto in the game is fictional. It has no name, no brand and no real value.

You climb with experience from everything you do. Every rank opens something: a property, a business, a role, a route. The higher you get, the less heat a job costs you; others do the dirty work. Below, per rank, the most important things that open up.

Everyone plays in the same world. Add friends with a six-character code, see them on the map, chat, and start a clan with a name and a tag of up to four letters, up to twenty-five members.

Bigger jobs take two, three or five people: a ram raid, a truck across the border, a night running an illegal gambling den. Everyone plays the same roll. When you steal together, whoever started chooses who gets the loot, or sells it straight away and splits the profit the way the crew agreed. Friends offline? Your compagnons fill the empty places.

Together you hold neighbourhoods against families that take back whatever is weakly held. Betrayal is allowed. It will cost you your name.

Find a crew on Discord Download the alpha