Hi everyone, I’ve been a long-time player of text-based crime/mafia browser games, and I’ve officially started development on my own project. I’m aiming to capture that classic "persistent empire-building" feeling—committing crimes, training stats, navigating a player-driven economy, and climbing the ranks—without falling into the trap of making it feel like a "second job" or a stale spreadsheet simulator. Since this genre thrives on community interaction and long-term strategy, I want to build the features that players actually care about, rather than just guessing. I’d love to get your input: The "Mafia" Hook: In your opinion, what is the best way to handle the "Family/Gang" dynamic? Are there systems (like recruitment, territory control, or leadership roles) that you feel are underutilized or currently done poorly in existing titles? Active vs. Idle: How do you prefer the game to balance active effort (manual crimes/attacks) versus passive growth? Do you prefer a "time-based" system where everything is about efficiency, or a more traditional "energy/stamina" model? Progression & Burnout: What is a mechanic that usually makes you quit a browser-based RPG after a few weeks? Is it power creep, a stagnant economy, or perhaps the lack of meaningful endgame goals? Social Friction: What kind of player-to-player interactions (like markets, bounty systems, or coordinated attacks) actually make the world feel alive to you? I’m currently in the early stages, so I have the flexibility to prioritize mechanics that the community is actually hungry for. I'm not looking for marketing hype—just honest feedback from those of you who live and breathe this genre. Thanks in advance for your time and expertise!
Sharing a quick peek at the early dashboard for my Mafia project. It's still early days and definitely a WIP, but I’m looking for some constructive criticism on the UI. What’s working for you here, and what would you change to make the daily grind more intuitive?
I've not played a lot of these games, but it was primarily Kings of Chaos. Different factions with different bonuses is pretty cool, and I always chose dwarves due to being a very defensive player. So an idea to fit your theme is something like Italian family, American family, Bosnian family, or something like that?
EVE Online has the best player-based economy imho, and I think an economy like it where anyone can contribute and benefit is pretty cool, even cross-faction.
To mitigate cheating/macros/sweaty players, I think there should be either some timers to actions, but this is an incredibly fine balance to not turn off players' engagement. A puzzle/mini-game to grant additional free resources can help the casual players to remain engaged, like how Kings of Chaos had a captcha for recruiting (userscript was used to speed up the process, and become the unofficial standard), and EVE Online had the "analyze the signal" kind of mini-game that yielded ISK.
I think the amount of time to be spent when you log in should be generally limited to about 10 - 15 minutes. You heal, recover from attacks, buy new upgrades/restock, and then do things like initiating an expedition, spend your available resources, and then let it go like 8 - 24 hours before energy and such are filled again.
Player interactions are important, and being able to make either one time deals or recurring deals that involve something like "If you attack my enemies, I'll give you a bonus/grant you equipment" or "Whenever I'm attacked you will spend 20% of your defensive capabilities to add to mine" etc. And of course with simple trading too.
A "vacation mode" like the one Kings of Chaos had I think is very important, that essentially freezes all your passive gains and progress, but you are made immune to attacks and sabotage (making a manual progress-action requires you to disable vacation mode).
Risk-reward should be available in all tiers, to cater the most players. E.g. low-risk expeditions where the gains are low but steady, not reducing or resetting progress, and high-risk stuff that could potentially cripple your enemy, but could also cripple you.
And of course, have a solid mobile interface, as that is likely where you'd get the most traffic these days.
I hope my feedback is good, and I wish you good luck with your project!
Hi Havatra, thank you so much for taking the time to share such detailed feedback. It’s rare to get this kind of high-level design insight, and I really appreciate you taking the effort to write it all out.
I’ve touched on several things especially the balance between casual engagement and anti-cheat measures. I’m currently focused on reworking the ui/ux and balancing gameplay and your point about risk-reward tiers is a fantastic perspective that I’m definitely going to keep in my notes as I continue development as i already have some activities that dont required lot of risk for casula players but the greater the risk the greater the reward but ill still continue workign on it
It’s great to hear from someone who appreciates the PBBG genre. I’d love to keep you in the loop as the game progresses if you’re open to it, I’d be happy to reach out when I have a playable test version ready for more specific feedback. Thanks again for the support!