City of Gangsters is a somewhat ambitious entry into the Economy Management Sim style of games. Based in the early 1920’s, City of Gangsters has you start a crime syndicate and make it go from nothing, into a thriving criminal empire.

Although not a feature I got to test out, there was a map seed option when you started a game, and I like the idea of the random maps you can get from different seeds. It lends itself to a huge amount of replay option with near limitless different ways of playing the game over a long time. It’s something that always tickles me in the right way, and I hope that it works well upon release.

The gameplay is slow. Not in a bad way, just in a somewhat plodding pacing way. It takes a while before you really can start to get anything done. Businesses will only buy small amounts of black-market goods after you’ve unloaded a large amount, meaning you need to leave them alone for a while. Whilst this likely won’t be an issue once you start expanding, in the early stages of the game this is somewhat draining. It took me about 10 minutes to actually get enough of my Moonshine sold to be able to create my own moonshine production and start to create a flow-on effect of more money business.

I’d probably just like to see either one or two more businesses early on that are willing to buy Moonshine, or even have the store be willing to buy 4 crocks on the first turn, and 2 on every subsequent, rather than just a build-up of 2 every turn. It’d help pace the slower early parts of the game a little bit better.

I liked the idea of having to worry about the police. The game encourages you to regularly store your goods and money in your safehouse, because getting arrested by the police will wipe everything that your driver has on them. I found on my first attempt at playing I sort of felt like I was soft locked, because I had purchased a front, and expanded that before making a Moonshine operation, lost all my items when I got arrested, and didn’t really seem to be able to do much more. The second time around, I was much more cautious and regularly unloaded my car into the safehouse. It’s a not too punishing method of keeping you regularly aware of your inventory.

There is lots of interaction between the businesses and using your favour to garner respect so as to further your business. I struggled a little to work out how it actually worked, because I seemed to dump a bunch of favour into befriending people who still didn’t want a bar of me, whereas others were instantly my best mate. This may be something addressed a little bit better with a tutorial, which in the build I was playing, the game did not yet have.

I believe I only had two interactions with other crime syndicates. One I tried to beat up and nearly died from doing so. Another was annoyed at me because I was expanding, and then just stopped being annoyed not long afterwards, despite me refusing to give them money to start a boxing club. The more you expand the more other crime syndicates would impact you, I assume, but I didn’t really ever have any issue with them. The police gave me more problems than other criminals did.

The game works well enough, and the foundations are definitely there. There is a pacing issue, and I often found myself just sitting and waiting to try and get further. This might be a design choice, but at times I found myself having to skip 4 or 5 turns, just so I could then start playing again. The game is fundamentally sound, but currently doesn’t offer anything starkly different. The aesthetic is pleasant, and the music is relaxing. Yet there is just something lacking. We’re still nearly 6 months away from the currently published release date, and I could definitely see more coming out of it.

It’s definitely one worth keeping an eye on. I have hopes that the developer will implement a method of speeding up gameplay just a bit, and maybe making some interactions feel a little more fleshed out.