I met a pretty cool company named Lunchtime Studios, who are working on a game that has been in development for six years. The game is called Lords of New York, which is based in NYC during the 1920s, ala the prohibition era. You play a guy named Vince, who is a collector in the mafia.
The story starts off with Vince in a hotel room, the phone rings and your boss informs you that you have to deliver money to a policeman, Joseph Kelly, an officer you have a history with. You meet up with Mitzy, your girlfriend, at a speakeasy in Hells Kitchen. You and Mitzy exchange a few words about the money and what will go down after the pay off. Lucky, the guy that was freed from prison by the boss finds you at the bar. You, Mitzy and Lucky exchange some words, which leads to playing a few hands of poker.
This is the first time you get to actually see for the first time poker in the game and how it works. You also get to see for the first time a talent. Talents are a major part of this game and you can rank up your talents using a ‘talent’ tree. One talent I had access to in the demo was card up the sleeve, which allows you to swap a card from your hand with a card that is up your sleeve. I don’t know how the cards that are up your sleeve are decided, but I think they are based on the ones you have in your hand. The other special abilities you can use are intimidation, stacking the deck, and dealing from the bottom of the deck, to name just a few. Not a lot of detail on each, but they will be fleshed out in updates to come.
Once you win a few hands of poker, the cop, Joseph Kelly, comes in and takes you to an alley behind the speakeasy. You argue a bit with the cop and you end up telling him that you don’t have all the money yet. You work out a deal with him. You then meet Mitzy at a train station where you argue about what you, the character, will do with the money and his future. You buy two tickets so you and Mitzy can get out of dodge with the stolen money.
In the game you control how you treat and act towards Mitzy. If you are cruel to Mitzy, she will run off with the money and you will have to play poker to get the money back. If you are nice to her. she will get kidnapped and you will still have to make the money back while playing poker. Really it doesn’t make a difference, but it’s still a nice touch.
Lords of New York is shaping up to be an interesting card game/RPG, which mechanics that make it a nice change of pace from your average poker-sim. The game’s kickstarter can be found here. They have a website here and the personal webpage for Lords of New York is here.
