One city. Every side of the law.
New Citizen is a multiplayer roleplay simulation set in Bornwood, a big open-world American city built in Unreal Engine 5.7. Pull a driver over, revive a stranger, haul freight, buy a house, or try to rob the Southern Town bank. Everyone you meet is a real person, and what you do follows you.
This is a serious, slow-burn roleplay game, not a run-and-gun shooter. It is in Early Access, built by one lead developer, self-funded, with four contract developers, and the last section tells you plainly what is rough today.
Join the community. Find us on the official New Citizen Discord (the invite is in the Links section of this store page). Ask the community and staff for help, report bugs and talk about updates.
WHAT'S IN THE BOX
1 open-world city: four districts (Downtown, West Bornwood, Eastern District, Southern Town), the prison, trailer park, coal mine, quarry and woodlands, with 105 map points of interest
4 emergency departments with 32 ranks and 20 subdivisions: Bornwood Police, the Southern County Sheriff, Fire Rescue and EMS
5 civilian jobs with guided tutorials: garbage, freight, parcels, mining and the bank counter
41 cars across 12 model lines, each with 24 damage zones, plus a nine-bay garage
31 homes to buy or rent, from trailer-park units to large houses
23 shops, 93 wardrobe pieces and an 87-piece police uniform locker
5 guns plus a taser, with first-person aiming
60 police actions in one menu and 97 interaction verbs for talking to, helping and arresting people
138 emotes, 60 in-game achievements and 24 guided tutorials
Proximity voice in 3 ranges (3, 10 and 25 metres), 103 radio chatter clips and about 20 kinds of street scene across 33 crime zones
Official servers in Australia, Europe and North America, plus dedicated server files to host your own
72 staff actions in a 13-tab console, 5 staff ranks, 47 Gamemaster spawn entries and 3 server-wide events
A DAY IN BORNWOOD
One shift, using only things that are in the game today.
9:40 p.m., Police HQ. Desk Sgt. Alvarez puts you on duty and the roll call begins: a squad lined up and a sergeant reading numbers straight from your server (officers on duty, open calls, people in custody, your own bookings). A checklist warns you if your taser, sidearm or radio is missing. You press Enter to START SHIFT. Armourer Whitaker hands over a taser and the X24 duty pistol, Fleet Sgt. Brandt issues the patrol car, and you tap 2 for the light bar and 1 for the siren.
The call. F4 opens the MDT tablet. A P2 "stolen vehicle located" card sits on the board. You accept it, follow the marker and set your status to 10-97 on scene. Within a few hundred metres the scene builds around you: a parked car and a driver who has just seen your lights.
The stop. You press G on the suspect, pick ORDERS and then "Hands up". A ring fills. This one bolts. The taser drops them for five to eight seconds, a progress bar runs and the cuffs go on. "Run their name": you raise the radio, a STAND BY chip pulses, and a dispatch card comes back with date of birth, address and priors.
The drive in. Escort the suspect to the car, seat them in the rear and drive to Police HQ. Booking Officer Hollis takes over, and on the MDT you file the arrest report with charges and close the call.
Payday. Fifteen active minutes in, the paycheck bar under your wallet fills and the money lands in your bank, less 10% income tax. Stand still and it would not have.
After the shift. You go off duty at the desk. A burger at Burger Barn pulls your hunger bar back up, paid from your bank. On Sunny Street you stop at a For Sale sign: $27,900 to buy, or about $560 a week to rent. Not yet. Tomorrow you could do this as a paramedic, drive a garbage truck, or be the person being chased.
WELCOME TO BORNWOOD
You arrive with a name, money in the bank and a city that has never heard of you. An hour later you could be walking a beat, hauling freight, signing for a trailer in the park, or running from the one person who recognised you.
A real place to explore. Press M for the city map. Switch layers on (Jobs, ATM, Housing and more), click to drop a waypoint that shows on the compass and in the world, search by name and follow a GPS route with an ETA. The map pins 12 ATMs, 7 job sites, 5 vehicle-return points and all 31 homes for sale.
Your first hour, guided. The introduction covers moving and sprinting, your HUD, the map, an ATM, your phone, your inventory, chat and voice, vehicles, staying out of trouble and finding work. There are 24 tutorials (144 steps). Press O to replay any of them.
Join your way. The server browser filters by region, mode, age rating, favourites and official-only. Quick Match drops you on the busiest online server, Continue returns you to your last world, and you can right-click a friend in Steam to join them in the city.
Voices that carry. Hold X to talk. Ctrl+X cycles whisper (3 metres), talk (10) and shout (25), and far voices fade and muffle. Choose push-to-talk or open mic and test your microphone. Chat has /me, /do, /s (shout), /w (whisper), /ooc and /911.
A phone in your pocket. Press Tab for banking, messages, 911 and a market, served by the NC Hub, the studio's website companion that runs inside the game.
Keys at a glance. F interacts, G opens hub spots (ATMs, shop counters, casino tables), I is your inventory, B the emote wheel, N the radio and F4 the police tablet. 29 keys can be rebound, and holding F1 shows the key legend.
Built to look the part. Unreal Engine 5.7 with Nanite, Lumen and virtual shadow maps. NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 on supported RTX cards, five quality presets from Low to Cinematic, frame caps from 30 to 240, a first-launch auto-detect, adjustable HUD size and a streamer mode.
BE THE LAW
Lights on. Window down. Hands where I can see them. Some people comply. Some run.
Two agencies, nine ranks each. Join the Bornwood Police Department or the Southern County Sheriff's Office, from Cadet up to Chief or Sheriff. Between them the four departments carry 20 subdivisions.
Going on duty. Talk to Desk Sgt. Alvarez. Your first shift opens with a full cinematic roll call, later ones a short one, and both end on a pre-shift checklist. The station has an armourer, a fleet sergeant, a booking officer, three jail cells, a four-floor elevator and a vending machine.
An 87-piece uniform locker. Shirt, trousers, vest, boots, hat, duty belt, holster, four pouch slots, radio, body camera, badge, chevrons and watch. Dye pieces in eight colours, save five loadouts, and rank and subdivision unlock the better gear.
One menu, sixty police actions. Press G on an NPC (or hold J on a player). TALK, ORDERS (hands up, get on the ground, drop the weapon, step out of the vehicle), SEARCH (pat down, pockets, vehicle, run their name), ACTIONS (warning, citation, read rights), CUSTODY (cuff, escort, place in vehicle, request transport, book) and HANDOVER. NPCs roll to comply or refuse, and the card says COMPLIED, REFUSED or DONE.
Make the arrest. Tackle a runner (sprint and click), taser from seven metres, cuff with a 2.5 second progress bar and paired arrest animations, escort, and seat the suspect in your rear seat. Book them at Police HQ or Bornwood Prison, where jail time runs in real time even while the prisoner is offline. Or request transport: a two-deputy car drives to you and books your NPC suspect.
The MDT tablet (F4). A call board with P1 to P4 priorities, unit status codes (10-8, 10-6, 10-97, 10-7), a live map, NCIC person and plate lookups, warrants, reports and BOLOs. Calls come from players dialling 911 and from the city's dispatcher in ten templates, among them pursuit, stolen vehicle, DUI driver, traffic stop, burglary alarm, disturbance and welfare check. A call nobody takes expires after 20 minutes.
Paper that bites. Fines appear as a Pay or Refuse card (up to $50,000), citations start at $100, and a court summons carries a real date. Skip it and a warrant follows. Every officer action is written to an audit log.
Lights, siren, radio. 1 siren, 2 lights, 3 traffic advisor, 4 spotlight, 5 and 6 alley lights. Sirens wail, yelp and phaser with air-horn bursts. Hold N to talk on the police radio.
SAVE LIVES
Someone's heart has just stopped. You have a bag, a monitor and a decision to make.
Be the paramedic. Pass the EMS exam at the locker in the fire station, then take an ambulance from the Fire and EMS vehicle board behind it. Medical calls arrive on your MDT as P1 to P3 cards, most urgent first. Strangers can also call you to a collapsed person with a single prompt, and passers-by do it for themselves after 45 seconds while a paramedic is on duty.
Work the patient. The G menu on a patient lets you check responsiveness, check breathing and pulse, start CPR, put them in the recovery position, apply pressure and open the patient monitor. The monitor shows an ECG trace, heart rate, blood pressure, SpO2, respiration, bleeding level and consciousness, driven by the patient's real condition. A bedside card appears on its own when you are within three metres.
CPR that can fail. Hold the use key until the bar fills, with a 110-a-minute metronome cue. It does not always work, so you keep at it while there is a chance, and then you stretcher them into the hospital.
Medical scenes on the street. Paramedics kneel over a collapsed stranger while a bystander shouts for 911, then load a stretcher and drive off. Car crashes arrive with wrecks, injured occupants, an ambulance and firefighters in attendance.
Players go down for real. A downed player has a rescue timer and needs CPR. If no paramedic comes, they die and wake up in a 15-second first-person hospital sequence, and the hospital sends a $200 bill.
Roll with Fire Rescue. Take an engine from the board and open the Firetruck Control Panel: main pump switch, a PSI gauge up to 300, six attack lines, three intakes (front, left, right) and a tank gauge with a time-left estimate, plus warnings for no water, low water and high pressure. Run a hose from the hydrant and put water on target. Fires to fight are still in development.
Seven ranks in each service. Trainee EMT to Chief Medical Officer, Probationary Firefighter to Fire Chief.
LIVE A LIFE
Clock in. Get paid. Buy the house. Park the car in the garage. Hope nobody follows you home.
Garbage truck. Sign up at Waste Management, take a truck from the job board and follow your waypoint. Bins line the streets north of downtown and in Southern Town, about one every 50 metres. Collect one, move on (an emptied bin stays empty for a while) and return the truck to a Vehicle Return point.
Freight. At the Truck Depot, take a semi, back up to the loading point, open the trailer doors and carry boxes in by hand until it is full. Deliver to Southern Town, unload in the right zone and get paid in cash.
Parcels and mining. Start a delivery at the Post Office desk and carry one parcel at a time to the Trailer Park. Or sign on at the coal mine, buy a jackhammer at Bornwood Hardware, bring a light and mine coal, copper, iron, silver, gold and stone to sell at the quarry or to a player Mine Owner.
The bank counter. Become a Banker Clerk at the Southern Town Bank, change into the uniform and open accounts for customers. Watch the vault: its keypads trip a silent alarm.
Paid for showing up. Paychecks land in your bank every 15 active minutes: $500 for police, $333 for paramedics, $300 for miners and $250 for every other paid job at default settings, less 10% income tax. Ten idle minutes or time in custody earns nothing. Bins and parcels also pay $10 each, and ore $10 to $80.
Cars that are yours. The dealership screen lists 41 cars in five categories with horsepower: dealer cars from $3,400 to $37,000, plus civilian sedans ($2,890), SUVs ($4,400) and sports cars ($4,900) in six colours each, with a 5% vehicle tax. They are saved to your account in a nine-bay garage with an attendant, and trunks hold a 5x4 grid in a sedan up to 10x6 in a pickup.
Homes that are yours. 31 homes for sale from $23,400 to $58,500: 11 trailer units, 18 houses and 2 large houses. Press F at a For Sale sign for the BUY or RENT card. The MY HOME menu locks the door, hands out up to five spare keys, lists the home for resale or sells it to the bank. Rent is 2% of the price a week; upkeep is daily, and 14 unpaid days return the house to the bank.
Shops with faces. 23 shops with named clerks and a cinematic buy screen: five clothing stores with try-on (press T), hardware, a pawn shop that buys back, a burger bar, hot-dog stands and City Hall licensing, with 288 shelf entries and 33 food and drink items.
Dress the part. 93 wardrobe pieces, 81 of them enabled today, including 24 tops, 17 hats, 17 pants, 15 belts, holsters and bags, 5 vests and 4 backpacks. A grid inventory with 11 body slots and a live paper-doll holds it all, with weight-limited backpacks and belts with pouches. Other players see what you wear.
Be someone. Hold B for a wheel of 138 emotes in 11 categories, with favourites and two-person handshakes, and earn 60 in-game achievements in 12 categories (eight are hidden).
GO THE OTHER WAY
Every city has a back door. Walk through it and the city starts looking back.
Stick up a pedestrian. Aim a drawn gun at someone on the street within five metres and choose "Rob them". Most comply and hand over cash from a take bar that takes a few seconds. Some run and call 911, and some fight back. Each person can be robbed once every six hours, there are hourly and daily caps, and a robbed district goes on alert, so there are no money loops.
Rob a till. Shop registers can be robbed too, but only with a weapon in your hand.
Crack the bank. The Southern Town Bank has two keypads, one on the staff back room and one on the vault. Guess a four-digit PIN in five tries (green is the right digit in the right place, amber the right digit in the wrong place) or work a three-notch dial. Either way, the police get a silent alarm.
Dirty money. Stolen cash is marked, and ATMs refuse it. It has to be washed before it is any use.
A black market that moves. One masked dealer, fourteen hidden spots, and he relocates every 45 minutes when nobody is watching. Cash only, no licence, never to a cop on duty. The AK costs around $12,500.
Guns have rules. Five guns and a taser: the X24 (15 rounds), the Mac-10 (30, full auto), the AK (30), the M14 (10) and a 7-shell pump shotgun. The licensed shop sells the X24, the Mac-10 and the taser to holders of a $1,500 gun licence from City Hall. The long guns come only from the black market. First person gives you sway, recoil, reloads, left-hand IK, indoor echo and ringing ears. Hits stagger and limp you by calibre.
The Gilded Spade. Five casino tables downtown with roulette, blackjack and slots, served by the NC Hub and played with your in-game bank balance only. No real money, ever.
A LIVING CITY
Turn a corner and something is already happening. Not all of it is your problem.
Street scenes everywhere. About 20 scene types are staged around you, out of sight, at most four near a player: traffic stops, ID checks, road rage that ends in a shove, breakdowns, car crashes, collapsed strangers, arguments, phone calls, buskers and beggars. Real officers and medics take a scene over the moment they step in.
Neighbourhoods with reputations. 33 crime zones, from the Civic Quarter to Southside and the Casino Back Lots, set how likely each kind of scene is, so rough areas behave like it.
Anybody can be someone. Press Talk on a pedestrian and a background person becomes a real, named NPC with an age, a job, a licence and pocket contents. 97 interaction verbs cover greetings, directions, a handshake, a hug, a photo, offering cash and worse. Swap numbers and they text you; up to 30 friends remember what you did.
Witnesses react. Within 25 metres people freeze, flee, panic, gawk, film or, rarely, step in. A phone call opens a report for police on duty, and if no player answers within a minute (15 seconds if nobody is on duty), an NPC patrol car and ambulance roll in.
Crowds and traffic you can dial. Staff set pedestrians and traffic in five steps. 802 pedestrians walk 1,872 baked routes, and at higher settings 221 cars drive 162 loops with rush-hour jams and horns. Official servers start with a light crowd and city traffic off.
Night is a different city. A full day and night cycle with 13 sky presets, including fog, rain, thunderstorms and snow. Wet roads give 28% less tyre grip and snow 62% less, and crowds follow the clock: thin at 3 a.m., thick by the morning commute.
Radio chatter on the air. 103 chatter clips fill the police, EMS and fire channels, leaking from shoulder radios and cruiser windows, with a squelch when someone keys N.
REAL CONSEQUENCES
Crash a car and it stays crashed. Skip lunch and your legs notice. Take a bullet and you bleed.
Cars that break. 24 damage zones per car: engine, radiator, hood, trunk, roof, four wheels, glass, lamps and bumpers. Power drops, engines stall and die, the radiator steams and lamps flicker. Each door can be fine, loose, hanging or gone, tyres blow and glass shatters. A wrecked car will not start, and the garage sends the repair bill.
A seatbelt matters. Press B to buckle up. Unbelted in a severe frontal or roll-over crash, you can be thrown out through the windscreen.
Weight, grip and sound. Twelve class rules tune the ambulance, fire engine, garbage truck, postal van, sports car and more. Nine engine sound profiles, burnouts (hold W and S), a park mode on P and a cabin camera in emergency vehicles.
A body that needs looking after. Hunger and thirst cap your stamina, so a sprint on an empty stomach does not last long. Falls start to hurt from about three metres and can empty your health at about seventeen. Wounds bleed, hits stagger and limp you by calibre, and a downed player needs CPR.
Money that matters. Cash in your pocket can be lost or stolen. Bank money is safe, and 10% income tax, 8% sales tax, 5% vehicle tax, fines, upkeep, repairs and hospital bills all come out of it.
Hardcore RP and Sandbox servers. Hardcore RP servers run crash and NPC damage at full strength and let falls kill. Sandbox servers halve it and forgive falls.
No anonymous trouble. Accounts are verified through Steam, and every staff and officer action is written to an audit log.
RUN YOUR OWN STORY
Be the storyteller. Drop a crash on the highway, then watch the city react.
The GameMaster editor. Switch it on and fly a free camera with a visible cursor. Hover cards describe any player, NPC, vehicle or prop within 120 metres. Grab, move, rotate or delete it, right-click for a context menu, teleport, and flip between Fly and Body. Diagnostic layers show collision and path blockers.
A spawn menu with 47 entries. 20 missions, 11 scenes, 10 NPCs and 6 street incidents: traffic stops (driver complies or runs), stolen vehicles, pursuits, burglaries, armed robberies, DUI drivers, welfare checks, car crashes, medical calls and collapsed people. Add 18 vehicles and a 150-item catalogue in 12 categories.
World events. LAWLESS NIGHT is announced two minutes ahead, then cuts the power, sounds sirens, closes the shops (except the black market), takes dispatch offline and snarls the roads. Safe zones sit at spawns, the hospital and Police HQ. CITY BLACKOUT kills lights and shops for six in-game hours. GRIDLOCK jams the roads for three.
Sky and crowd on tap. From the World tab set the weather, the time of day and how crowded the streets are.
Reports. Players file /report and staff claim, go to and resolve each one.
FOR SERVER HOSTS AND GAMEMASTERS
Official servers run in Australia, Europe and North America, in Hardcore RP and Sandbox modes. A server card shows the name, theme, rules, live player count, on-duty services, ping and region.
Your own city. Dedicated server files and a hosting kit: you supply a Windows machine (8 dedicated cores and 32 GB of RAM suggested) and a MySQL 8 database, open UDP 7777 and 27015, claim your server on the NC Hub and tune it from the Owner Deck: name, theme, rules, economy (starting cash, paychecks, taxes), factions, whitelists and queue. Changes arrive in about a minute with no restart.
The kit. Crash-restart supervision, nightly database backups, updates with one-command rollback and a health check. Servers must run the current server build.
A real admin console. 72 actions across 13 tabs (Players, Live Map, Reports, Logs, Bans, Economy, World, Vehicles, Server, Staff, Database, GAME SETTINGS, Toybox) and five staff ranks: Support, Moderator, Admin, Senior Admin, Owner, each with limits such as temporary bans of up to 24 hours for Moderators and 720 for Admins.
About 100 server settings for weather, population, combat, real estate and economy, changed live with a two-step confirm, plus whitelists for joining and for the police, paramedic, fire and judge roles.
Seasonal resets. A wipe tool needs a fresh dry-run code and a verified backup. It resets money, items, houses and cars while your community keeps its accounts and characters.
Community. Hosts and gamemasters are welcome on the official New Citizen Discord (the invite is in the Links section of this store page): swap setups, ask staff questions and report what breaks.
GALLERY
A Sheriff cruiser with the light bar lit between the downtown towers.
A paramedic, police and a cruiser on a city street.
A deputy covers a kneeling suspect beside a Sheriff car at night.
A family home on a tree-lined street.
Old town square in warm evening light.
The highway viaduct through the pine forest, with the refinery and mountains beyond.
A snow-covered valley road toward the mountains.
QUESTIONS PLAYERS ASK
Is New Citizen multiplayer? Yes, and only multiplayer. There is no offline or single-player mode. You join an official server or a community server.
Can I host my own? Yes. Dedicated server files and a hosting kit are available, and you need a Windows machine and a MySQL database. The kit has been tested in dry runs, not yet on a rented server in the wild, so expect a few rough edges and tell us about them.
What platform and engine? Windows PC, Unreal Engine 5.7, DirectX 12, keyboard and mouse. DLSS 4.5 works on supported RTX cards. There is no Mac, Linux, console, Steam Deck or controller support.
Are there mods? Not yet. There is no mod loader or Workshop in the game, but hosts can tune about 100 settings and the Owner Deck. Mod and Workshop support is in development, with no dates.
Are there in-game purchases or real-money gambling? No. The casino uses your in-game bank balance only.
How do I report a bug? Press Enter, type /bug and one or two sentences. Your build, PC details and the end of your log are attached for you. You can also use the official Discord.
How big is it? Large: around 80 GB on disk. Check the System Requirements on this page.
EARLY ACCESS: THE HONEST PART
New Citizen is a big game led by one developer who funds it personally, with help from four contract developers. You are not buying a finished city. You are becoming one of its first citizens.
Rough today
Some careers are newer than others. Police and the civilian jobs have had the most play. Paramedic work is newer, and Fire Rescue is newer still: the engine and pump panel work, but there are no fires to put out yet.
Inventory and worn gear can briefly look empty on a busy server. It usually corrects itself, and we are fixing the cause.
Pedestrians and traffic run on older route data. Traffic is off and crowds are light by default, and some people and cars still take odd routes.
Driving handling, braking and the driving camera are still being tuned. Guns can sit a little off in the hand or on the holster.
Distant buildings can pop in or look wrong at long range. The map has unfinished spots, and the coal mine area was affected by the latest water update.
A full server has not been stress-tested.
The MDT, phone, banking, casino and bank-job screens come from the NC Hub. If the hub link is down, those are down too.
Nothing is fully voiced. NPCs talk in subtitles over synthesised murmur, and radio chatter is synthesised babble.
English only (the hub menu, phone and MDT frames also offer five more languages). Keyboard and mouse only. Windows only.
The install is large, around 80 GB on disk. An SSD is strongly recommended.
In development (no dates)
Fires to fight for Fire Rescue
Rebuilt NPC traffic and pedestrian routes
A full character creator with face, hair and body options
Skills and levelling (built, switched off)
More police and fire stations with a choice of where your shift starts
Permanent character death on Hardcore servers
Steam achievements, mod and Workshop support, and a larger new map
Updates
We ship updates through Steam as fixes are ready and post patch notes on the Community Hub. There is no fixed schedule and no promised dates.
Content note
For adults. New Citizen contains violence against people and non-player characters, including shootings, run-overs and fights; blood and gore effects, including dismemberment of non-player characters and bodies that can be searched, carried and dragged (a Blood and gore setting offers Off, Reduced and Full); crime and robbery; drug use and dealing, including background street scenes in high-crime areas, which you can switch off in settings, and cannabis growing and sale; simulated gambling with in-game money only; and strong language from NPCs. Player text and voice chat are not filtered.
Requirements and community
See System Requirements on this page. They will be refined as more PCs are tested. For help, bug reports and conversation, find us on the official New Citizen Discord (the invite is in the Links section of this store page) and in the Steam Community hub.
Thank you for playing early.
Tanner, Specpixel Entertainment