The Shadow Architect

The Shadow Architect is a card-based simulation in which you try to bring a city’s system to a halt by driving its producers out of action. You use bureaucracy to burden businesses and people with paperwork, taxes, inspections and supply-chain blockages, while keeping your actions secret.

Sabotage the city

Rather than build up a city, you work to leave it without producers. Analyze producers’ positions and roles, then use action cards to target their settings and strike at critical points. You can impose customs duties on factory raw materials or create committees that bury inventors in red tape.

Provoke producers

Industrialists, Artists, Inventors and Economists each have a Patience limit and sensitive points you can provoke. Grid mechanics let you use relationships between neighbors, including isolating a producer whose neighbor has disappeared. Wear producers down with paperwork and other mind-numbing techniques, then watch them disappear.

Stay unnoticed

You manage a suspicion level as you sabotage the city. If you act too aggressively, Parasites and Raiders can detect you and come after you.

Campaign progression

Take on increasingly challenging areas and unlock new cards as you progress.