Neon & Bones

Neon & Bones is a management game set in Las Vegas from 1957 to 1961. You run the Neon & Bones casino for the Chicago Family, making a decision about the night’s takings every evening. You can declare the money to the Gaming Control Board, send Chicago its share, pay your crew or keep the cash. Each choice affects the heat on you, the Family’s patience and your crew’s loyalty, while the FBI’s file on you grows.

Run the casino

You can buy a motel, a bar and a laundry that washes more than towels, as well as take controlling stakes in rival casinos. Each rival casino gives you a full floor to visit and build on. You can also buy a vacant lot on the Boulevard and build a casino from the sand, dealing with a foreman, unions, inspectors and sandstorms before its searchlight-lit opening.

Your crew members have their own loyalty, greed, leverage and secrets, including Vincent’s debts, Rosa’s son and Frankie’s ambition. Other people in the city include whales on hot streaks, a sheriff who likes dinner and a reporter who likes you less. The Sunday Las Vegas Clarion reports on what you actually do.

Story and choices

The campaign follows your rise from the casino keys to the count room and the old man’s chair. Its events include a raid after Apalachin, when you have 60 seconds to decide whether to burn the ledger or keep Chicago’s copy as leverage; a sit-down with the Cleveland boss, where one of your own whispers your numbers across the table; and a Senate committee where you can tell the truth, lie under oath or take the Fifth. Lies remain in the FBI file. At the Commission, seven chairs vote for the next boss, and most votes are won before the meeting.

Someone in your crew is talking to the FBI. You follow clues across the chapters, call suspects into the count room and name one of them. Heists and investigations also involve a robbery at the cage, with clues from the bar, the cameras and the street. Accuse the right person, or hand a shovel to the wrong one.

You can pursue several endings, including becoming the boss of Las Vegas, becoming the man on the Strip, going legit, selling out or walking away. Afterward, you can continue as your successor. To make the casino yours without a share, tribute or courier, you need to fill a fund in Reno, find a respectable name for the paperwork, secure the support of two Families and cool the FBI file. The final step is a drive to a diner on Highway 95 at dawn with the last envelope; one chapter also has you take someone for a ride along Highway 95 at night and decide mile by mile whether to turn back.

Game modes

The story campaign spans four eras of Las Vegas. For a shorter game, you can play a 30-day Season. Quick War uses the same Strip and the same seed for every player, and the last casino standing wins. In Shared House, players run one casino together, with the count room, floor and fixer assigned to different players. In Shared Strip, each player runs a casino on the same Strip, competes for the same properties and can help friends.

Features and options

• Three difficulty levels and optional challenges
• 25 achievements and casino-floor cosmetics, including carpets and neon
• Nevada’s Black Book: if banned from every casino, you run your own through a frontman with plans of his own