Pipe Dream

2008. Brooklyn. You owe Tony $1,500 by Sunday. The city doesn't care how you get it.

A micro-MMORPG for you and 31 friends. One neighborhood, every system talking to every other one, and a city that writes down what you did.

TALK TO THE CITY

• Every named person in the game has a life, a job, a grudge list and a memory. Call them, visit them, run your mouth. They remember. Some of them never let it go.

• Talk with your voice. Push to talk on the street, into a payphone, across a bar. NPCs answer in character. Say something ugly to Frank and he'll bring your mother into it.

• Get famous the hard way. Witnesses describe your clothes, your car and your face. The news runs your picture at six. Your crew gets the grid.

• The rumor mill is real. What you said at the bar is on the block by morning.

WORK IT STRAIGHT

• Hold a real job. Deliver pizzas for a boss who hates you, drive a cab, work the register, stand the door at the club. Slots are limited. Frank only needs two guys.

• Your paycheck has 2008 withholding. Rent is due. Insurance is weekly. The hospital bill is not a rumor.

• Rent an apartment, then buy one. Then buy the building. Collect from the tenants. Fix the boiler or don't.

• Open a store in an empty shopfront. Stock it with whatever you've got. NPCs will buy it. Hire a guy to stand there.

• Run a bar. Hire the bouncer, order the beer, pick the station, book the band. Close it to the public and make it your crew's.

OR WORK THE ANGLES

• Carjack someone at a red light. Pick a lock on a parked car. Chop it, plate it, or dump it in the river.

• Rob the bank with your crew. The cops close the streets around you and stack up. Wait too long and SWAT shows up with a truck. Most people get out. Some people wait.

• Pickpocket, fence, launder. Dirty money doesn't spend at the nice stores. The laundromat on Bay Street takes its time.

• Witnesses can be bribed, threatened or walked to a payphone. Cops aim like people. The ladder goes all the way up, and your crew is not beating the feds.

• Get caught and go to court. Hire the lawyer. Or the lawyer is your friend, and he's terrible.

A CITY THAT RUNS WITHOUT YOU

• Parked cars line every block. People park, lock up and walk off. Some of them come back.

• Three neighborhoods: Bay Street, a slice of Manhattan, and Canal Street with its own rules and its own crew.

• A TV that never shuts up. Weather by day, the news at night with a tally of what the city lost yesterday, and a late-night block of cartoons and ads for products that will ruin your life. You can call the number.

• 20 radio stations on a real schedule. One of them you should not be listening to.

• A 2008 internet: job boards, a forum, classified scams, a dating pool, a file-sharing app that will brick your computer.

• Fire spreads and rain puts it out. Blood stays on the street until the sweeper comes. The medical examiner's van is in no hurry.

• A mall, a bowling alley, an arcade with tickets, a gaming cafe with a LAN shooter, an oddities bazaar on the pier, a church with a priest who notices.

UNDER THE STREET

• There's a game show in the sewer. Nobody sanctioned it. Pay the buy-in with your friends, survive six rooms of traps that are unfair on purpose, and split the pot. Your friends are the real hazard. The last room shows everyone what you chose.

BRING YOUR CREW

• Drop-in co-op, up to 32 players.

• Runs on your machine. No servers to shut down, ever.

• Name your crew, pick your colors, assign ranks. Sign deals on paper or get scammed face to face. Break an oath and the whole city knows the word for you.

• Titles over your head you earned, bought, or had forced on you.

• Grief each other into a police response you all regret.

EARLY ACCESS WITHOUT THE BS

• Everything on this page exists in the game right now.

• No DLC. No microtransactions. You buy the game, you get the whole game.

• $14.99 now, rising as major updates land. Early is the discount.

Tony wants his money by Sunday. Church is also on Sunday. Your call.