City Of Gangsters – Spotlight

City Of Gangsters is a management sim of sorts where you’re running a Mafia syndicate. The setting is 1920’s Chicago, and the Prohibition is in full effect. Your role is to illegally produce and distribute alcohol. To do so you need to make contacts, establish a network, and grow your criminal empire.

For a management game, City Of Gangsters has a lot of character interactions that give way to mini stories of sorts. You’ll be fostering relations, doing favors, call in favors, and so on. You’ll also be purchasing ingredients for alcohol production, and selling at a rate that nets you a profit. That involves making smart deals, negotiating, etc. And also, avoiding the cops or bribing them. Overall City of Gangsters offers a unique experience in an otherwise well established genre.

Pros:
Great setting
Looks good
Mechanically deep gameplay
Memorable character interactions

Cons:
Some mechanics aren’t explained well

Score – 8/10

About:

In this new management tycoon game you’ll start a criminal operation from nothing, and grow it into a well-oiled money machine! Build speakeasies and illegal distilleries. Manage production chains and resource distribution. Smuggle goods from out of town and bribe the police to look the other way. Grow a powerful crew and keep your rivals under your thumb. Eliminate competition and rule the city. But most importantly, keep the money flowing.

The year is 1920, the start of Prohibition in the USA. With congressional action, a huge segment of the national economy becomes illegal overnight: bars and saloons are ordered to close, distilleries and breweries go quiet, distributors shut down. But a new era is dawning: a gilded age for smugglers, black markets, illegal manufacture, and organized crime.

This is where you come in. You’re a new arrival in the city at the dawn of Prohibition, with ambitions of striking it big. Behind many of the city’s facades, people are building makeshift distilleries, secret loading docks, nighttime speakeasies. Work your way into this network, and the world will be yours.

But think beyond making a quick buck or two. You gotta be thinking ahead. You gotta be thinking bigger. Much bigger.