Gangster games online, free: from text mobs to a Lagos street

Gangster games come in two very different sizes. There are the big console crime sandboxes with cars, guns and a whole city, which usually cost money. And there are the free online ones: browser games where you climb a crime family one click at a time, and mobile games that pack an open-world city onto a phone. This list is about the free ones you can play online, with a few paid classics at the end for comparison.

These are our picks, not a ranking. Facts about other games are checked; the sources are at the bottom.

Free gangster games, at a glance

Our picks

Omerta

Omerta has run in browsers since September 2003. It is a text-based multiplayer game in which you play an American gangster in the 1930s, working your way up the ranks of organised crime with and against other players. It has always been free to play; since 2015 it has also sold content codes for players who want more.

Torn

Torn is a text-based online RPG set in Torn City, a grim underworld where you build a character from scratch, rise to the top and try not to get killed. You can join factions, take jobs, invest and travel, all with other real players. Its own site says there is no advertising and it will always be free.

Gangstar Vegas

Gameloft’s Montreal studio made Gangstar Vegas, first released for Android and iOS in June 2013 and later made free-to-play with paid extras. You are Jason Malone, a mixed martial arts fighter who wins a match he was supposed to lose and ends up caught in a mob war. It is a third-person open-world game with driving, shooting, more than 80 missions and side activities like street races and underground fights. It is single-player. See games like Gangstar Vegas for more in that style.

AJ Cities

Our own game. It is free in your browser on a phone or a computer, and 18+.

AJ Cities is not a game about becoming a kingpin. It is about what street life looks like from the bottom, when the people with power are a club owner, the police and whoever holds your debt. You play AJ, deported from London to Lagos with nothing, now living in Room 3 of Iloro House on June 12 Street, on the edge of Ajegunle.

The gangster of the piece is the Warden, Chief Lazarus Ekanem. He worked thirty-one years at Kirikiri prison across the road, retired with a gold watch and, people whisper, a copy of every key, and bought the house at No. 1145 that he calls Prizm. He does not sell anything. He connects. At his back booth an importer who needs a container cleared at the ports meets a man who knows a man, a contractor meets someone with a signature. He introduces, hosts and witnesses, and takes ten percent for the table. He never signs and never touches the goods. He calls every young man “my son” and remembers every naira anyone has ever owed him.

Around him, the street hustles in smaller ways:

• The gate police, Sola and Tunde, want ₦2,500,000 to open the north gate, and will take it little by little.
• In the bush, a bookie takes bets on the street football, and three officers lend a shotgun for bottle practice.
• Dozie, across the corridor, is “in opportunities”: BreakCoin, forex arrows, a generator that runs on water.

It is satire more than glamour: police who want to be “settled”, a big man with a fly-whisk he does not need, a hero who keeps his word. The money in the story is story money, and there is no real-money gambling. Read the Warden’s story to see how he built his table.

Why a street, not a city

Most gangster games are power fantasies: you start small and end up owning the town. That is fun, and the games above do it well. AJ Cities tries something smaller and, we think, a bit truer to how power feels on an ordinary Lagos street. Nobody in it owns the city. The Warden owns a house, a table and a lot of favours. The police own a gate. AJ owns a mattress, a hook on the wall and a London accent that, to the Warden, means connections abroad. The story is about what a man in AJ’s position does when the only people offering him a way out are the ones keeping the door shut.

Paid classics, for comparison

If you have a console or gaming PC and want to pay for a full gangster story, three that are often recommended:

• Mafia: Definitive Edition (Hangar 13 and 2K, 2020; PS4, Xbox One, PC). Tommy Angelo, a cab driver, rises through the mob during Prohibition.
• Sleeping Dogs (United Front Games and Square Enix, 2012). An undercover officer inside a triad in Hong Kong.
• Yakuza 0 (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and Sega; Japan 2015, worldwide 2017). Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima in fictional districts of 1988 Tokyo and Osaka.

How to pick

• Want a long-running mob game with other players, all in text? Omerta or Torn.
• Want an open-world crime city on your phone? Gangstar Vegas.
• Want a story about who really runs a street, free in a browser? AJ Cities.

More: mafia games online and the best crime story games.

What free gangster games can I play online?

Our picks include Omerta and Torn in a browser, Gangstar Vegas on phones, and AJ Cities, a free 18+ browser game set on a Lagos street.

Is Omerta still running?

Yes. Omerta has run in browsers since September 2003. It is free to play, with paid content codes since 2015.

Who is the Warden in AJ Cities?

Chief Lazarus Ekanem, a fictional retired Kirikiri prison warder who owns the club Prizm and takes ten percent of every deal made at his table.