What is My Criminal Life? A free crime game in your browser

If you're new here, this is the short version of what My Criminal Life is.

It's a crime game you play in your browser. You make an account with your email, and you start in Noob City with $100, a cardboard box to sleep in and the rank of Nobody. There are 16 ranks above that, and the top one is Untouchable. There's nothing to download, and it works on a phone as well as a computer.

How it plays

Four bars sit at the top of every page: energy, brave, will and health. Crimes spend brave. The gym and fights spend energy. The bars refill on a timer, including while you're logged out, so a ten-minute visit is a real session. Energy comes back 4 points every five minutes.

Games built this way have a name, PBBG, short for persistent browser-based game. If you want the long version, what a PBBG is explains it with this game's own timers.

Money comes from crimes and a day job, and a job pays once a day at 5:00 PM New York time. You spend it on gym passes, school courses and a better place to live. Your rank is worked out from your level, your stats and the value of your home, and nobody tells you what order to do any of it in.

What's in the city

• The map. Noob City is one painted map with more than 30 buildings in seven districts. Every building is a door.
• The casino. Game cash only, and the real odds for every game are published in the Rules.
• The Criminal Times. A daily newspaper with front-page stories, a crime blotter, market prices and classifieds.
• Most Wanted. A boss in each city, sitting on a stash. When one goes down, the cash and gear are split by how much damage each player did.
• Gangs. Start one for $500,000 or join one. They share a vault, and between gangs at war the score is respect.
• St. Jude's Church, the City Dump and the Estate Agent. Confess, dig for scrap, or move out of the box.

The city map guide, the casino guide and the gangs guide go deeper on three of them.

What it isn't

It's illustrated and button-driven. There are no typed commands, no avatar to walk around, and nothing happens in real time. It's built from words, numbers and menus, with painted art on top. If you came looking for a text-based crime game, that page is honest about what the game is and isn't.

Before you sign up

You have to be 18 or older, and it's one account per person. It's free to play. The game is in alpha, which means it's playable but still being built, and things change every week. The Rules are public, so you can read them first.

If that sounds like your kind of game, make an account. If you'd rather read more first, the FAQ has the common questions.

Marc