Forge your own 1960s criminal empire in Company of Crime
Company of Crime is the first game from Resistance Games, a brand new studio founded by seasoned game designer, Jussi Autio. The game is set in 1960s London, featuring a number of the city’s most well-known boroughs such as Westminster and Camden & Islington. In this turn-based tactics game, players build a crime empire as the Criminals, similar to the infamous Kray twins of the 1960s. You also have the option of playing as the Police to try and tear down the criminal empire at large.
When you start the game as the Criminals, you play as the equivalent of Kray brothers – criminal siblings hellbent on taking over London. Unlike a lot of traditional turn-based tactics games, Company of Crime specialises in melee combat. Autio mentioned in our preview, “X-Com has perfected the gunfighting in turn-based tactics games, so we’ve tried to do the same in regards to melee combat”. Positioning is everything when it comes to melee combat. If you can get your players into the right spaces, you’ll be able to pummel enemies with ease.
At the beginning of every mission, players have to select their crew along with their weapons of choice. As the focus is on melee combat, you can acquire weapons such as knuckle dusters and hammers to damage enemies more effectively. Following on from the crew selection, you will then have to decide how you want to approach the mission. If you want to go on the attack, you can barge through the front door. You can take a stealthier approach, instead opting to sneak past people by going through an alternate entrance.
There are guns in the game, however, using those guns is extremely risky and can get you into serious trouble. Using weapons like pistols and even BB guns will make it easier to extort local businesses, but if you are forced into combat you can switch to your melee weapons. Killing a member of the police during a mission will force that specific character into a ‘wanted’ state. This can cause serious damage to your empire as that member will be targeted by the police outside of missions. If the police manage to arrest your murderous member while they are at one of your safehouses, you could not only lose a valuable member of your team but also a big part of your business.
Company of Crime is scheduled to launch sometime in 2020. When asked whether coronavirus could affect the game’s release, Autio assured us the team is making excellent progress despite being forced to work from home. “For us, the bigger impact as developers was that we planned to go to events like GDC to sell our other products but we aren’t able to do that now”. Development-wise, the team are able to work from home thanks to remote access to their office. As for whether the game is likely to release on consoles, the priority is to launch on PC for now, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Written for the April 7th issue of DailyBits.