Start simple, on purpose
A lemonade stand opens the day you buy it and asks exactly one question: what do you charge? Get that right for a week and the city starts showing you what else you could run.
New: the big licences — granaries, hotels, breweries and more open on day 30
Everybody starts with one lemonade stand.
A cozy-competitive tycoon game on the actual streets of Chicago. Pick a corner, set a price, and find out whether you understood the block as well as you thought. Nobody hands you an empire — you talk your way into one, one storefront at a time.
No download, no purchase. Your city lives on the server and follows you to the app and every device.
—Players trading
—Active this week
—Shops open right now
2,266Real Chicago parcels
The ladder
From a folding table to a business of businesses.
Every business in the city, in the order you earn them. The first asks one question — what do you charge? The last asks twenty, all at once, and pays like nothing else when you get them right.
See it
A whole city, and every person in it.
Zoom out and it's a map of neighbourhoods and train lines. Zoom in and the numbers turn into people: walking the real streets, stopping at your window, joining a queue — and walking off when your price is wrong.
How it plays
Two decisions on day one. Twenty by day fifty.
A game that hands a beginner staffing, training, marketing and inventory on the first afternoon is a game they close. So your first business is a cart, and everything else you earn.
See where every gem went
Every shop opens on a plain bar: what came in, what the stock, the rent, the wages and the landlord each took, and what you kept. A shop that's losing money tells you which line is doing it.
Bigger costs more than money
A coffee shop takes two days to fit out. A restaurant takes four. You carry the rent the whole time and take nothing — which is what makes choosing the complicated thing a real decision.
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Hire a manager
Four shops in, you can't be everywhere. Hire a trainee, a manager or a general manager — or fire one.
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Own the ground
Buy the parcel and it appreciates whether you trade on it or not. Lease it out and take a slice.
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Deal with real people
Sell a business to another player, bid on theirs, and message them about it.
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Read the sky
Weather lands on the map. Sun sells lemonade, rain sells coffee, snow turns mowing into shovelling.
The city
A real city, divided the way a real city is.
Not a grid of identical squares. Real neighbourhoods on their real streets, blocks cut into parcels narrow at the frontage and deep to the alley, and the El running where it runs. Ninety seconds from a platform is a different business from four minutes.
Pick a neighbourhood
Every one plays differently. The same shop is a different business in each of them.
Rivals
You are not alone on the block.
Within a week of opening, somebody sets up down the road and prices under you. That's the game. But losing is a setback, not an ending — lose everything and you're handed a stand and a corner, and you go again.
The Discounter
Goes under your price, every time. You will not win this one on price.
The Institution
Been there forever and everybody loves them. Slow, and very hard to shift.
The Landlord
Never runs a shop. Buys the ground under yours, then charges you to stand on it.
Everyone else
Sell a business to another player, bid on theirs, and climb the boards past them.
Your corner is waiting.
One account, everywhere. Your city lives on the server, your rank is on the boards, and your mail is waiting whether you last played on the sofa or at a desk.