A downloadable game

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The City is growing, changing, and each of you represent a different face of the City, a yearning to be something else. Through the years and seasons, what will we become?

WE, THE CITY is a game about belonging outside belonging, and features no dice and no masters. Together, players tell the story of a city and its communities changing through the seasons; as different energies fall in and out of vogue.

Play as Glimmering, Neon, Rose, Grid or Utopia—competing souls of the city inspired by neoliberalism, cyberpunk, Sex and the City, Brazil and urbanist memes!

WE, THE CITY was inspired by:


Note: WE, THE CITY is the latest game in my knicknack challenge (make a creation — game, analysis or otherwise — every month). You can follow my blog to receive updates on every knicknack's release.

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

WE, THE CITY.pdf 24 MB

Development log

Comments

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We, the City is a deceptively simple riff on the Belonging Outside Belonging framework with clean mechanics and a really elegant layout. The game paints with a very broad brush: rather than focusing on specific factions or districts within the setting, the game has its players narrate the city’s movement in terms of political ideologies and social motivations.

The competing political ideologies at play here are designed specifically for a contemporary setting and it really shows, but this game could very easily be re-skinned or transported into another genre without too much effort. I’d love to play We, the City as an interlude in a longform campaign set in one particular place.

I really like what you have created with belonging outside belonging. Playing concepts which are parts of a city is exciting and original. I'm sure this game will inspire other designers

(+1)

Nice game, very original! Some comments/questions:

  • It would be nice to have a couple of examples of physicality, as I find it a bit abstract and hard to grasp. Other may, too.
  • At first I thought that the soul was shared! The "your" in "Pick your soul" is ambiguous and the game is called "We, the city", so...
  • How many players is it recommended for? I guess it doesn't make sense as a solo game?
  • I wonder how this will play out over several turns. Maybe an extended example will help? One of the things I wonder is: will the characters mentioned appear again, or is the focus only the city in a more abstract way?