Guide
How to play My Criminal Life
Everything a new arrival needs for the first week: what the bars do, how crimes and the gym work, how to get out of jail, and how the ladder from Nobody to Untouchable is climbed. It takes about five minutes to read.
Sign-ups are open.
Your first ten minutes
Sign up with an email address and a password, then open the link we email you. The game waits until the address is confirmed. You have to be 18 or older, and it’s one account per person.
You arrive in Noob City with $100 and a cardboard box to sleep in. The $100 came from pawning a pocket watch at Corner Pawn on your way into town, and Vera Lusk, who runs the place, has mailed you a letter. Read it. Her ledger has six pages of small jobs for your first week, and each one pays when you bring the ticket back to her counter.
New accounts get a few nights of protection, so nobody can attack you while you find your feet.
The four bars
Four bars sit at the top of every page, and almost everything you do spends one of them.
- Energy pays for gym reps, fights and boss runs. It comes back 4 points every five minutes.
- Brave pays for crimes, and for busting other players out of jail. It refills a little every five minutes.
- Will multiplies what each gym rep gives you and nudges your odds on a crime. Your home sets its maximum, which is the real reason to move out of the box.
- Health is what a fight takes away. Every five minutes a third of it comes back.
A fifth bar tracks experience. When it fills, an [Up] link appears next to your level.
The bars refill whether you’re signed in or not, which is why short visits work. Spend them, go do something else, and come back later.
Crimes
Crimes are how most people start making money. Each one costs brave, and the brave is spent whether it works or not. A success pays cash and experience. A miss pays nothing, and about half the time it lands you in the County Lockup for a while.
The list starts with Search For Cash: the streets, the water fountains, the mall. Bigger crimes unlock as you level up, a few levels before you’re really ready for them, and a locked crime shows the level it opens at. The game never shows you the odds. They get better as you level past a crime and as you practice it, a full will bar helps a little, and even the easiest crime fails now and then, because the odds never go above 90%.
Every so often the Crimes page and the Gym ask you to pick a number. It’s a quick check that a person is playing.
The 16 ranks
Your rank is the short answer to “how far up are you?” It’s worked out from your level (the biggest part), your stats and the value of your home.
Some doors care about rank as well as level. The casino’s Back Room, for one, only lets in players from Runner up.
Nobody stays a Nobody for long if they show up every day. Untouchable is another story.
The gym
The gym is where your fighting stats come from: strength, agility and guard, plus labour, which jobs look at. You need a pass first. The normal pass costs $100 and works from level 1, so your whole starting stake buys it. It’s also the first job on Vera’s ledger. The MAX pass opens at level 20 for $20,000 and trains faster.
Each rep costs 1 energy and a little will. The fuller your will bar, the more each rep gives you, so train when will is high. You can’t train in the hospital, and reps in jail count for half.
Jobs and school
A job pays once a day at 5:00 PM New York time: cash, a small bump to your stats, and job points toward a promotion. Each job has ranks, and each rank asks for a minimum strength, labour and IQ. McDaniels takes people who just got off the bus.
The Local School sells courses. You pay up front, take one course at a time, and can’t quit halfway. Every night knocks a day off, and when the course is done its stats land on your character. Some courses open doors elsewhere: the medic course is what lets you patch other players up in the hospital.
Jail and the hospital
Jail usually comes from a failed crime, and the hospital from a lost fight or a boss that knocked you out. Either way there’s a timer that ticks down a minute at a time. You can wait it out, or:
- Pay bail. It always works. It costs more the higher your level and the longer the sentence.
- Get busted out by another player. It costs them 3 brave, and if they’re caught they join you.
- Try to escape. It costs 5 brave, you can try once every 30 minutes, and a miss adds time.
- Get revived (hospital only) by a player who has taken the medic course, or by a home doctor, a house upgrade that makes a house call once a day.
Confession at St. Jude’s helps too. Every tenth day in a row banks a pardon that takes 10% off your next sentence.
Levelling up
Experience comes from crimes, and from fights you win and walk away from (more on that below). When the bar fills, click [Up] next to your level to open the Promotion page, then press Level up. It never happens on its own, so you choose when.
Every level adds 2 to your maximum energy and brave, 50 to your maximum health, and a merit. Your bars go up by the same amount on the spot.
Fights and Most Wanted
You can attack any player in the same city once their protection, and yours, has run out. A fight takes half your maximum energy, and you need at least that much to start one. You also need something to fight with: a weapon you have equipped, or a one-use item in the Temporary slot.
Win, and you choose how it ends:
- Mug them for a slice of the cash they’re carrying.
- Hospitalize them for a long stay.
- Leave them, which is the choice that pays experience.
Lose, and your health hits zero and you give up some experience.
Most Wanted
The Most Wanted board at the Police Precinct lists one boss per city, each sitting on a stash that grows over time. Anyone can take a swing. A run costs a quarter of your maximum energy, you need at least half your health, and bare fists are allowed. When a boss goes down, the cash and gear are split by how much damage each player did. Boss runs pay no experience.
Money
Early on, money comes from crimes, your day job, Vera’s tickets, and showing up. Sign in three days in a row and there’s $300 waiting, and the streak bonus grows from there, up to $10,000 at 35 days. You can also sell what you don’t need and take a cut when a Most Wanted boss goes down.
Spending it is easy. A home costs money to keep up and the bill comes every night, so check it before you move. A bank account costs $25,000 to open, which is a goal for later in your first week, not your first day.
A good first day
If you want a plan, follow Vera’s ledger. It goes roughly like this:
- Read Vera’s letter in your Mailbox.
- Buy a gym pass and spend your energy on reps.
- Pull your first crime.
- Sign up for a course at the Local School.
- Take the job at McDaniels.
- Come back after 5:00 PM New York time for your first pay, and again tomorrow, when the bars are full.
By the end of the week you should be out of the cardboard box. The FAQ answers the rest, and the Rules say what gets an account closed.
More guides
Gangs and turf
Starting a gang, the shared vault, gang wars and respect, and the turf coming to the map.
Read the guide →
The casino
The Velvet Rope: the rooms, the games, the published odds, and why it is game cash only.
Read the guide →
The city map
Noob City's seven districts, what is in each, and how to get around.
Read the guide →See it for yourself
It’s free, it runs in your browser, and you can pull your first crime a few minutes from now.
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