Text based crime RPG where gangs run the streets

Scartown is a free text based role play game where crime runs rampant. Run PvM missions with monsters, bosses and loot, or go player-versus-player with muggings, hospital stays and gang wars against real people. Rise through the ranks and earn your respect.

Plays in any browser. Nothing to download, nothing to install, free to start.

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Everybody in this city has a story. What will yours say?

What is Scartown

Free multiplayer text based crime RPG you play in your browser

Scartown is a role play game made of words, numbers and choices rather than rendered graphics. It runs in a browser tab on a laptop, a tablet or a phone, and your character lives on the server rather than on the machine, so you can put it down anywhere and pick it up anywhere else. That is also why it loads instantly and never asks anything of your hardware.

PvM dungeon crawl missions

Nineteen sites across six districts, each one worse than the last. Every floor is monsters, elites and a choice at the end of it, and every site ends with a boss that has a rhythm you can read. Get carried out and you keep the experience and lose the bag.

Exclusive loot from monsters

Salvage, components, rare consumables and thirty attribute mods that exist nowhere else. No shop stocks them, no amount of money buys them, and the only way to hold one is to go down and take it off whatever is guarding it.

Craft and tune at the Workshop

Tune a weapon for damage and accuracy, weld a Fire, Electric or Venom line onto it, socket the mods you found, and build a bigger belt. At the very top, six relics forged ten fragments at a time.

Player-versus-player attacks

The street is open. Mug other players standing in your district, put them in a hospital bed, take their respect and their experience, and answer for it when their gang comes looking. Nobody can touch you for your first three days, and after that you are in it.

Join a gang for protection

Apply to a crew, share a vault, hold a hideout. A gang cannot be attacked from the inside, and a gang at war raids the rival hideout and beats their members in the street until one of the doors comes off.

Free to play in any browser

No download, no install, no plug-in. Nothing sold for money decides a fight: credits buy days, cosmetics and convenience, never damage.

A typical day in the city

Level up, train stats, and fight for survival

Six things to do, and each one pays for the next. Missions and crime bring in the money and the gear, the gym and the trades turn that into a character worth fighting with, and the street is where you find out whether it worked. Nothing here is a daily chore: you choose what to spend the evening on, and every one of the six counts towards the same climb.

Travel the city
Six districts, each one gated by level. Travel is cheap and every district is a real place with its own shops, gym, mission sites and people standing around in it.
Run a mission
A PvM mission every three hours. Load four belt slots, go in, and choose after every floor: walk out with the loot you are holding, or go one deeper for the boss.
Commit a crime
Four crime groups, each with its own skill bar. Con games pay best and jail you longest, burglary turns up keycards, robbery leaves you holding salvage, and surveillance almost never gets you caught. The rating beside a crime is a real check, not a promise.
Train your stats
The gym turns energy into accuracy, strength, dexterity, resistance and endurance, and the equipment improves as you put the hours in. Where you live counts too: an address carries its own training bonus, and the property ladder runs a long way up.
Attack a rival
Anybody standing in your district and outside your gang is a target. Mug them, hospitalize them, take the experience. Fighting is the fastest levelling in the game.
Rise through the ranks
Missions, crime, the gym and the street each pay a different currency, so no single grind carries your title. Levelling has no ceiling and every band costs more than the last.

Eight weapon classes, six things you wear

Rank up your equipment

Pick a weapon and a set of armor, then make them yours. The Workshop tunes a weapon five levels for damage and five for accuracy, welds a Fire, Electric or Venom line onto it, and drops an attribute mod into its socket. Armor tunes the same way for defense, evasion and protection from critical hits. Everything you rank up stays ranked up.

Ranged

Pistol

Dependable. Nothing it does is remarkable and nothing it does is bad.

Sub-Machine Gun

Puts rounds on target almost every time. Almost never finds a gap.

Rifle

Heavy rounds placed well, and slow to bring on target.

Shotgun

Lands often and opens people up often. Only the axe crits harder.

Melee

Short-Bladed

Fast and certain. Small numbers, but they land.

Long-Bladed

Reach and weight. A balanced weapon that rewards strength.

Axe

Modest on a clean hit and devastating on a bad one. The highest critical chance in the city.

Blunt

Heavy, graceless and consistently brutal. It does not do finesse.

What you wear

Body Armor

The heaviest defense you carry, and the reason a hit glances instead of landing.

Helmet

Second only to the vest, and the cheapest defense a new character can afford.

Shield

Carried rather than worn. Turns a fight you were losing into one you are still in.

Gloves

No defense at all. Gloves are attributes: accuracy and strength, a point or two at a time.

Boots

Attributes again, dexterity and resistance, and the difference between being hit and not.

Relic

Its own slot at the very top. Forged from ten fragments, and it changes how a mission goes rather than adding a number.

Six districts, nineteen sites

Six districts to explore, each tougher than the last

You start in the Old Quarter with a lock-up nobody claims and finish nine levels under Vantar Spire. Each district holds three sites, its own shops and gym, and a boss that is the only thing standing between you and the next postcode.

Level

District

1-10

The Old Quarter

Pawn shops with the shutters down and a lock-up nobody claims. Where everyone starts, and where you learn that a mission can go wrong.

10-20

Ferrous Row

Dead foundries and a scrapyard the size of a district. The furnaces are cold but something in Line B still runs at night.

20-30

The Greenbelt

Irrigation works and a growing dome gone to seed. Green does not mean alive down here.

30-40

The Heights

Tower 12 stands empty above the fortieth floor. Corporate security still walks the car park, and still asks for a pass.

40-50

The Undercity

Storm drains, pump houses and a flooded sump. Nothing that lives here has seen daylight.

50-60

Vantar Spire

The last address, and nine levels of sub-basement under it. The records room knows what everyone did. The level below it is not on any plan.

Free, on anything

Free to play on any device

A phone on the bus, a tablet on the sofa, a laptop at a desk. Same city, same character, nothing to install on any of them, and nothing to pay to start. Free here also means fair: credits buy donator days, refills, cosmetics and convenience, and they do not buy damage, accuracy or a single one of the thirty attribute mods. Those come out of a site with your name on the run.

Read the rules of the city

Questions people ask

Scartown FAQ

The short answers. The long ones, and about a dozen more questions, are on the full FAQ page.

Is Scartown free to play?

Yes. Making a character and playing the game costs nothing and there is no trial that runs out on you. Credits exist and can be bought, but nothing sold for money decides a fight.

Is Scartown a mafia style game?

It is a crime game rather than a mafia game. There are no families, no dons and no oath to swear. What it shares with the text based mafia games is the shape: a browser tab, energy on a clock, crime, jail, gangs and other players who can hit you. Scartown's version is street gangs in a city the law walked away from.

Do I need to download or install anything?

No. Scartown is a browser game. There is no client, no launcher and nothing to patch, and your character lives on the server, so a phone and a laptop are the same account.

What is a text based role play game?

A role play game made of words, menus and numbers instead of rendered graphics. You read what happens and choose what to do next, which is why it loads instantly and runs on anything.

Is it like the other online crime RPGs?

If you have played Torn or one of its neighbours, it shares the skeleton and it is fair to say so. What is different is where the hours go: the centre of Scartown is missions, a run down through floors of a site toward a boss, deciding after each floor whether to walk out with the bag or push deeper.

Can I play on my phone?

Yes. The whole game is built to work at phone width, and because the character is on the server you can start on a laptop at a desk and carry on from a phone on the bus.

Read every question answered

The city is waiting for you

It has been empty a long time and everything still in it is unclaimed. The Old Quarter is open, the lock-up is unlocked, and the first mission costs nothing.

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