Playtest, Crime & Cars

Update 0.7 is here, and it marks the start of our first real playtest 🎉. It's packed with new ways to make money, and new ways to get into trouble. Crime, cars, drinks and a lot of quality of life changes all land at once.

The biggest addition is store robbing 🔫. To rob a shop, you'll need a weapon and the nerve to use it on the shopkeeper. Every shop has its own value, and some are easier targets than others, which depends on your reputation: the lower it is, the more feasible a robbery becomes. How the shopkeeper reacts is unpredictable. Some hand over the contents voluntarily, some fight back, and some secretly trigger a silent alarm. You usually walk away with money and sometimes a product from the shop, but every robbery raises your wanted level, and robbed shops will remember you: expect higher prices, or no service at all. A robbed shop also stays closed or runs low on stock for a while, which affects everyone, not just you. Covering your face might keep your name out of the shopkeeper's report, and part of your loot is dirty money that has to be cleaned first.

That's where money laundering 💸 comes in. Money launderer NPCs will wash your cash, but they take a cut. The better you know a launderer, the more money you keep after washing it.

If you'd rather stay on the legal side, the new brewing system 🍺 has you covered. Fill a cauldron over a fire with water, add your ingredients, and stir from time to time. After a while, you'll get a drink. You can age drinks in barrels or distill them in a distiller to improve them, and every drink is rated with stars ⭐.

There's also a lot going on in the world of vehicles 🚗. The new Car Selling & Trading Point lets players sell and auction cars. As a taxi driver 🚕, you can drive real players around or bring NPCs from one place to another, and there's a new taxi depot in Paddington. Fuel now drops dynamically, weather changes how cars handle (rain makes streets slippery, off-road terrain slows you down), and you can lock and unlock your car with Shift + Right-click or kick passengers out by pressing F. The police can now use spike strips to stop cars. In the air, private jets ✈️ are now available, and helicopters and planes fly with more realistic physics. Playtesters should keep an eye out for the Beta Collection car and its mechanic effects, which are only available during the beta phase, and never again ⏳.

And more is waiting: C4 💥 explosions get bigger the more C4 is stacked, ObliMaps 📍 merges the Discoveries and GPS apps into one, companies get more roles with permissions and extra storage access blocks, and there are a lot of new houses to buy or rent 🏠. The airport exterior is finished ✈️, and Sampaio keeps getting more detail.