Crime Boss: Rockay City

Lore & Background

Crime Boss: Rockay City is the first game produced by Ingame Studios, a new developer of around 70 employees based in Brno, Czech Republic. The game was initially released for Windows through the Epic Games Store on 28 March 2023, later for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 15 June 2023, and on Steam on 18 June 2024 alongside the 'Cagnali's Order' DLC featuring a corporation's robot cops. The gameplay is focused around missions undertaken by teams of four criminals, with the player controlling one and cooperating with others or AI to pull off heists in a first-person perspective, frequently compared to the Payday series. Missions involve collecting loot from targets such as banks, trucks, and jewelry stores, with longer times increasing the likelihood of police reinforcements. The game offers quick play one-offs, six mini-campaigns called 'Urban Legends' with three chained missions each, and a single-player campaign with roguelike elements where the player expands territory after the previous underground leader dies; if the player character dies in a mission, their quest ends, and hired crew members who die or are arrested are lost forever. The feel is consciously imitative of 1990s crime movies such as Heat, and Rockay City is set in a Florida reminiscent of Miami Vice.

Reader's Guide

Crime Boss: Rockay City received mixed or average reviews for PC and Xbox Series X/S, and generally unfavorable reviews for PS5, with Metacritic listing the PS5 version as the sixth worst game of 2023. Many reviews criticized the hired voice cast for underwhelming performances despite their fame, and the stealth system was widely described as overly finicky and poorly supported, eventually prompting players to resort to shooting regardless of stealth attempts. Alice Bell of Rock Paper Shotgun called it a worse Payday, already a twelve-year-old game in 2023. Wesley LeBlanc of Game Informer gave it a 3/10, citing buggy and boring gameplay and poorly written plot and characters. Cory Wells of Hardcore Gamer gave a cautiously positive review, warning it was neither exactly like Payday nor an open-world game like Grand Theft Auto, but that gamers who didn't mind repetition would find a solid basic experience. Luke Plunkett of Kotaku was derisive, writing that Crime Boss 'gets absolutely everything it sets out to do wrong,' and noted that a month after the PC release in April 2023, the game had attracted little comment or notice online, even negative, citing the lack of a Steam release as a potential reason. The game's significance lies in its high-profile cast and its attempt to emulate 1990s crime films, but its legacy is defined by mixed reception and comparisons to the Payday series.

Did You Know?

• Crime Boss: Rockay City features Michael Madsen and Chuck Norris in their final video game performances.
• The game was developed by Ingame Studios, a new studio of around 70 employees based in Brno, Czech Republic.
• The single-player campaign has roguelike elements where the player character's death ends the quest to become Crime Boss.
• The 'Cagnali's Order' DLC, released alongside the Steam version, features a corporation's robot cops helping the police.