10 Best Games Where You Create and Manage A Criminal Empire, Ranked

Highlights

• Some crime games focus on mobsters and organized crime, but a few break the mold with unique gameplay mechanics and strategies.
• While classic titles like Scarface and The Godfather offer solid action gameplay, newer releases like City Of Gangsters provide depth in strategy.
• Management games like Gangsters: Organized Crime and Company Of Crime challenge players with complex mechanics and decision-making in the criminal underworld.

The power fantasy of controlling a criminal empire is something that has been explored primarily by gangster/mob games and usually focuses on management mechanics and turn-based strategy. The genre of criminal enterprise has maintained its course since its conception, with very few games steering away from the formula.

The following examples provide a varied list of crime games that mostly focus on management and strategy. While most of these games are themed around mobsters and organized crime, there are a few that break the mold.

Updated April 23, 2024 by Harry Ted Sprinks: At the time of writing, crime management games are a relatively underserved market, with very few games allowing players to both build and manage a criminal empire. Games like GTA: Vice City take an action-adventure approach to building a crime empire, but lack the depth and strategy of tycoon and business games, and this approach seems to be much more common (and, arguably, better realized) than crime management games.

As a result, the few games that cater to this specific niche can vary in quality, with games like Empire of Sin being simply too rough to justify their price tag. Some games continue to be inspired by management classics such as Gangsters: Organized Crime and Evil Genius, attempting to cater to this niche subgenre, but third-person classics such as Scarface: The World Is Yours and 2006’s The Godfather remain products of their time.

10 Company Of Crime – Criminal Enterprising In 1960s London

Steam User Rating: 53%

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: 2020
• Developer(s): Resistance Games
• Genre: Management

Although players can also take control of the Police in Company Of Crime, its focus is clearly on the gangsters. In Company Of Crime, players will recruit crews and pick jobs from an over-world map, taking territories and driving out rival gangs.

Company Of Crime has players managing their “Fear” and “Respect,” balancing the two efficiently to run a successful empire. “Fear” allows players to kick rival gangs out of their territory, while “Respect” allows players to turn civilian territories into their own. Where the game shines, though, is with its combat. Company Of Crime features turn-based combat that focuses on melee in tight spaces and even features flanking mechanics. Company Of Crime also features a mechanic called “Heat” in which players must avoid attracting too much attention from the Police, adding an extra layer of complexity and risk to the gameplay.

9 Omerta: City Of Gangsters – Manage A Crew Of Gangsters

Steam User Rating: 66%

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: 2013
• Developer(s): Haemimont Games
• Genre: Management

Similar to Company Of Crime, Omerta – City Of Gangsters has players managing a criminal enterprise through an over-world map and fighting through turn-based combat encounters with their crew. The management side of Omerta focuses primarily on using informants to discover what buildings do by using payments, bribes, and threats to progress.

Players also manage a crew of gangsters, each with their own stats and unique perks. Most of the visuals in the game’s over-world are superfluous, mainly acting as eye candy, as most of the gameplay is done through the game’s UI. Combat in Omerta is fairly simple, but effective, with most encounters tasking players with completing objectives and escaping.

8 City Of Gangsters – Climb The Criminal Ladder

Steam User Rating: 74%

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: 2021
• Developer(s): SomaSim
• Genre: Tycoon

City Of Gangsters is a management tycoon game that puts players at the bottom of the criminal ladder and tasks them with building an empire. This game is on the heavier side, featuring some 4X-style mechanics.

In City Of Gangsters, players will have to manage their economy, cargo, and storage to be successful. The game is unique in its gameplay, tasking players with doing delivery runs for their products and protecting them from rival gangs. Overall, City Of Gangsters is a more complex and less combat-focused experience, but it can be rewarding for fans of more complex games with a lot of micromanagement.

7 Scarface: The World Is Yours – Taking Over Rival Gangs With Weighty Combat

Metascore: 75

This video-game adaptation of the classic gangster film, Scarface, takes place in an alternate timeline in which Tony Montana survives. Scarface: The World Is Yours is a third-person action-adventure game, but its weighty combat and mechanics for building a crime empire make it a worthwhile experience.

Scarface: The World Is Yours may look like a knock-off of GTA wrapped in a Scarface package, but its gameplay has a bit more to it. Players will spend most of their time building up their reputation, taking over rival gangs’ territory, selling narcotics, and slowly building an empire. While Scarface: The World Is Yours is a fairly simplistic experience, its empire-building mechanics are a large part of its appeal.

6 Basement – A 2D, Pixel-Art Tycoon Game

Steam User Rating: 77%

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: 2019
• Developer(s): Halfbus
• Genre: Tycoon

This tycoon game tasks players with manufacturing and selling illegal substances in a small basement that players can slowly expand and upgrade as they progress. Players will have to hire and manage staff while managing their rates and fending off the Police.

In Basement, there are other sites that players can attack with bodyguards to take over and expand their territory, giving players opportunities to take risks to progress. For management game fans who love both pixel art and Breaking Bad, Basement is a fun experience, but it can get a little repetitive after a while.

5 The Godfather (2006) – Thematic Third-Person Action And Management

Metascore: 77

This video-game adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic gangster film, The Godfather, is a third-person action game in the vein of other urban third-person shooters at the time, with GTA being the most obvious comparison. The game features plenty of third-person action but with thematically strong gameplay mechanics.

To progress through the game’s story, players have to complete side missions and earn respect across the city. Players will have to take over businesses and take down rival gangs, all while being careful not to start a mob war by focusing too heavily on one specific crime family.

4 Cartel Tycoon – Manufacturing And Delivering Illicit Products

Steam User Rating: 77%

• Platform(s): PC, PlayStation, Xbox
• Released: 2021
• Developer(s): Moon Moose
• Genre: Tycoon

This narcotics-focused tycoon game has players managing a business, manufacturing, and delivering illicit products. Players have to manage warehouses, labs, and workshops to create the game’s various products, all while fending off rivals and the authorities.

Players also have to disguise their products as legal items to smuggle them through the game’s ports, and the game has a lot of mechanics similar to this that add a lot of risk management. Overall, Cartel Tycoon is very much about logistics, and it won’t be for everyone, but the way the game tasks players with weaving a tangled web of deceit as they manage their business is sure to please fans of tycoon games.

3 Gangsters: Organized Crime – An Old-School Classic

Metacritic User Score: 8.3

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: 1998
• Developer(s): Hothouse Creations
• Genre: Strategy

Released in 1998, Gangsters: Organized Crime is one of the oldest crime-management games, and remains one of the best. The game takes place in a Prohibition-era 1920s city and tasks players with taking over its entirety.

In Gangsters: Organized Crime, players will recruit members, extort various civilians, and expand their territory. Players will also have to worry about rival gangs, sending scouts, and learning where their headquarters are so that they can avoid or attack them. Gangsters: Organized Crime has an over-world city map that players can use to manage their business, but they can also zoom in on the city blocks to get an isometric, RTS-style view. If players can deal with the retro graphics and clunky controls, Gangsters: Organized Crime is one of the most strategic crime-empire games out there.

2 Evil Genius – A World Domination Simulator

Steam User Rating: 94%

Despite having a recently released sequel, the original Evil Genius, which was released back in 2004, is arguably a better game for those who don’t mind its old-school aesthetic. The game puts players in the role of an over-the-top villain that wouldn’t be out of place in a Bond film, creating a secret base and working their way toward world domination.

Evil Genius features three different characters to represent the player, and a massive variety of over three hundred items to design a base with, making Evil Genius a management game with a great deal of replay value. Furthermore, at the time of writing, the original Evil Genius has a relatively low price point on Steam, making it an accessible management game for those who can push past its old-school design.

1 Kenshi – A Sandbox RPG That Rewards Criminal Activity

Steam User Rating: 95%

Kenshi doesn’t advertise itself as a mob game, a crime game, or anything of the sort. Kenshi is a sandbox RPG in which players build a squad and decide what they want to do, following a completely free-form structure. The game allows for countless possibilities, but one of these is the possibility of creating and running a criminal enterprise.

One thing that players should know is that everything in Kenshi requires a lot of time and effort. There are a lot of obstacles, random elements, and harsh environments that are ready to stop the player and their companions at every turn. However, for those who don’t mind putting in the work, Kenshi is an extremely rewarding experience that allows players to thieve, smuggle, and sell various products for profit in a strange fantasy setting.