A stylised Bengaluru built on the real street grid from OpenStreetMap, with hand-made landmarks under fictional names. Three areas are free. Four story areas carry the rest of the main story, and thirteen city areas arrive over time, each with its own area story, side quests and gigs.
The free game is complete on its own: three areas, the prologue and Acts I and II, and every gig and side quest in them. Act II ends on a cliffhanger. After that, every area costs the same and opens a new part of the city.
Size check. Koramangala alone is about 2 × 2 km. GTA: Vice City was about 9 km². Twenty dense areas make a city several times that size, and we build it one area at a time.
We launch with a small city and grow it. Each season adds areas, and every new area brings its own missions, side quests, gigs and billboard slots. Story areas come first, so the main story is never stuck waiting.
Seasons are planned to be four to six months apart. Each area must earn before the next one is built, so dates follow the numbers.
Prologue: Backlog
Arjun's home. The college, Appa's printing press and the scooter route. A small, close slice of the old city that sets up what he stands to lose.
The prologue: four missions that teach the game before the open world opens up.
Act I: Delivery Boy
The heart of the free game. Startup cafés, PGs, a food street, a mall and the lake everyone wants.
Act I: eight missions, from the first OotaGo order to the survey pegs on the lake bed.
Act II: 100 Feet Road
Nightlife, cafés and the startup scene. Pubs close at one, races start at two.
Act II: eight missions. It ends with smoke over Seshadripuram and the end of the free story.
Act III: Homecoming
The bus stand that never sleeps, the railway station and the old single-screen cinemas. Everyone in the city passes through here.
Act III: Arjun comes home to a burnt press and chases the arsonist across bus roofs.
Act IV: Power Corridor
Where the city's power sits: the assembly house, the high court, the luxury tower and the cricket ground.
Act IV: Arjun works inside Raghav's campaign and makes the first choice that shapes the ending.
Act V: Unicorn
Glass tech parks, gridlock, a foaming lake and the startup money behind the land grab.
Act V: Bhoomi.ai raises fifty million dollars, and Leela finally tells the truth about the lake file.
Act VI: The Big Rain
The giant flyover, the lake underneath it and the gateway to the airport. The finale starts here and floods back into Koramangala.
Act VI: the planned flood, the chase to the airport and the three endings.
City areas sit beside the main story. Each one has a self-contained area story of four to six missions, new side quests, new gigs and its own people. Main-story characters drop in, and Biscuit follows you everywhere.
Wholesale lanes, silk shops, hand carts and the 4 a.m. flower auction. The densest streets in the game.
Area story, "Wedding Season": a silk-saree order for the biggest wedding of the year goes missing in the lanes.
Old Bengaluru at its gentlest: darshinis, tree-lined crosses, mango season and grandmothers who know everything.
Area story, "The Old Rain Tree": save a hundred-year-old tree from a road-widening crew before the monsoon.
Old markets, street food at midnight and the city's busiest shopping street.
Area story, "Commercial Break": a counterfeit-sneaker ring is using delivery riders as mules.
A lake in the middle of the city, old bungalows, bakeries and the best late-night food street in town.
Area story, "Last Bungalow": an old Anglo-Indian family refuses to sell to Skycourt Group.
Gandhi Bazaar flower stalls, the VV Puram food street and the glasshouse garden next door.
Area story, "Avarebele Season": a winter bean-festival food trail and a rivalry between two snack stalls.
The planned old suburb: wide roads, big parks, the 4th Block shopping complex and serious morning walkers.
Area story, "Complex Matters": the old shopping complex is up for redevelopment, and the shopkeepers want you to stop it.
PG capital of Bengaluru: coaching centres, cheap meals and ten thousand people sharing three-sharing rooms.
Area story, "PG Wars": two PG owners fight over tenants, and you are the mole.
Startup garages, gyms, cafés with laptops and the most famous traffic junction in India on its doorstep.
Area story, "Silk Board Survivor": a daily challenge and a delivery race across the junction at rush hour.
A city inside the city: a giant tech park, gated villas and the longest commute in the game.
Area story, "Campus Party": infiltrate a tech-park offsite as the DJ and find out who is selling employee data.
An elevated expressway into a campus town. Huge offices, huge canteens and a data centre at the end of the road.
Area story, "Server Room": a night-shift engineer finds something in the backups that should not exist.
Family homes, a giant mall, the railway junction and factories that run all night.
Area story, "Night Shift": a factory strike, a freight yard and a truck that should not be leaving.
Old money, big gates and the people who decide what happens to everyone else's neighbourhood.
Area story, "Gatekeeper": work as a driver for a powerful family and learn what is said in the back seat.
The expressway north, the airport and the sunrise ride to the hills that every Bengalurean has promised someone.
Area story, "Sunrise Ride": a weekend bike convoy up the hills, plus airport cab runs with very strange passengers.
Roads, lakes and building footprints come from OpenStreetMap, credited as "© OpenStreetMap contributors". No Google Maps or Street View data, ever.
10-15 hero landmarks per area, modelled by hand: the mall, the lake, the college, the assembly house. Everything else is generated from building kits.
Distances shrink and the best bits move closer together. The city should feel right, not measure right.
Recognisable silhouettes with new names: Janamandira, Kempu Court, Skycourt City, Ooru First Grade College, Monsoon Cricket Ground.
Malls, cafés, pubs, the PG, the press and the office load as small separate rooms when you walk through the door.
The city streams in small chunks with quality settings, so it loads in seconds and runs on an ordinary laptop.
Next: the story that runs through these areas.
Read the story →