Debt City

Debt City is a retro open-world life sim RPG about paying off a $10,000 debt to a mob boss in 10 days. After an island vacation goes horribly wrong, you arrive in the dangerous city and choose how to earn the money: work ordinary jobs, take criminal contracts, or mix both approaches. The game has a limited story and a sandbox world where you decide how to spend your time, with four possible endings.

Choose how to earn

You can work at stores and other businesses, stocking shelves, serving as a school janitor, washing dogs or flipping burgers. Alternatively, you can take criminal jobs for different crime families, accept assassination contracts to make citizens disappear, or craft and sell illegal substances on the black market. You can also become a monster hunter after a crazed doctor's invention goes haywire.

Manage your days

Each day gives you a limited number of actions, and days advance only when you take certain actions. Exceed your available actions and you pass out in the hospital, where you receive a medical bill. You choose the difficulty level, which affects how many actions you have. If you die, you start over and can try a different approach.

At the start, you choose between two characters, name your character, select an apartment color scheme and difficulty, and choose an apartment. You can decorate your apartment, adopt pets that follow you around, and use a PC with a job board, city news and the dark web.

Live in the city

Outside work and crime, you can eat and drink, play minigames on the retro game console in your apartment, try casino games, go for drinks at a bar or travel back to the island for a vacation. The game combines dark, mature themes with humor and satire, including tongue-in-cheek newspaper headlines, a crime family in football uniforms and a minigame featuring Santa Claus. Its retro graphics are accompanied by blues, jazz, rock and contemporary music.