How to Play

The shape of it

This is an arbitrage game. Not a combat game, not an RPG. You win by noticing that something is cheap here and dear there, and by still being solvent when you find out.

You start on day 1 outside your lender's door with $2,000, a coat that holds 100 units, and $5,500 of debt. Travelling to another district costs one day. After thirty days the game ends and your net worth is your score.

Eight places, one game

Before a game starts you choose where to work: New York, Tokyo, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Vesta Station, Thebes, Perdition. Each has its own six districts, its own police, its own name for whoever lends you the 5,500 and its own street names for the six commodities. Five are 1984. One is an asteroid station in 2184, one is Thebes in 1279 BC, and one is a silver camp in 1878.

The choice is flavour, not strategy. Every city runs on identical numbers — the same price bands, the same district roles, the same police pressure, the same thirty days — because there is one leaderboard and a score has to mean the same thing whoever set it. Pick the one you want to spend a month in.

The money column is the same two thousand in every row. Thebes had no coinage — a deben was a weight of copper, and the bank is a granary because grain was what you stored value in — and Vesta Station pays in company scrip, which is worth nothing one dock over. None of that changes a single price. It is the same number wearing local clothes, which is what lets one leaderboard hold all eight.

The prices

Six commodities, each with its own range, unchanged from the 1984 original. Named here as New York names them; the table below says what the other seven call the same six things.

That spread column is the whole game. Ludes swing six-fold, so a hundred of them can double your money — but a hundred Ludes is only worth a couple of thousand dollars, so they stop mattering the moment you are rich. Cocaine barely moves within its range, but a coat full of it is worth millions. The skill is climbing that ladder at the right speed.

The same six things, in five cities

Only the name changes. A row of this table is one commodity with one price band; which column you play in does not alter what it costs or how it moves.

Five things worth knowing

1. Space is scarcer than money

Your coat holds a fixed number of units whatever is in it. Once you have real money the right buy is not the cheapest thing on the board — it is whatever converts the most cash into the most profit per unit of space. Take every trench coat upgrade you are offered.

2. The debt compounds every single day

Ten percent, daily, whether you go back to see him or not. Ignored from day one, $5,500 becomes about $96,000 by day 30. But do not pay it off with your opening $2,000 either: a working coat returns far more than 10% a day, and repaying does not change your net worth at all — it only stops future interest. Pay it down with money you were not going to trade.

3. Geography is reliable, the daily board is not

Every city has a poor district where things are consistently cheapest to buy and a rich one where they are consistently dearest to sell — the Ghetto and Manhattan in New York, San'ya and Ginza in Tokyo, and so on down the list. That route is the backbone of a good run. It is also the most heavily policed pair of districts in any city, which is the trade.

4. Prices remember

Each drug carries a multi-day trend as well as daily noise, so a market that has been climbing all week is more likely than not to keep climbing tomorrow. Watching the board is a real edge, not superstition.

5. News breaks the rules

A police bust or a flooded market can push a price far outside its normal range — three to five times up, or the same down. Those are the days fortunes are made. If you are holding when a spike lands, sell into it.

When the police stop you

The chance of being stopped rises with how much you are carrying. You have four ways out and each costs something different:

• Run — costs nothing if it works, and health if it doesn't.
• Fight — needs a decent weapon. Weapons take up coat space, and their statistics are deliberately never shown to you.
• Surrender — you keep your health and lose every gram you are carrying.
• Bribe — the cheapest exit when your cargo is worth more than the demand. Keep some cash back for exactly this. Every city has one senior officer who does not take money — Officer Hardass in New York, Major Volkov in Moscow — and when he is the one in front of you, that exit is closed.

Where things are

Two of the six districts carry the services, in every city. Which two are named below; the district names change, the arrangement does not.

• Where you start — the lender and the bank. The Bronx in New York, Ueno in Tokyo, Belleville in Paris, Cheryomushki in Moscow, Dashilan in Beijing, Berth Nine in Vesta Station, Scribes' Quarter in Thebes, Front Street in Perdition.
• The industrial district — the safe house. Stored stock cannot be taken off you, but you cannot sell it from there either. Brooklyn in New York, Ota in Tokyo, La Villette in Paris, Avtozavodskaya in Moscow, Shijingshan in Beijing, Foundry Deck in Vesta Station, Embalmers' Row in Thebes, The Stamp Mill in Perdition.

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