Mafia games online: running a street, not a city

The mafia fantasy is usually the same: start as nobody, end up running the city. It is a good fantasy, and the games below do it well. But real power is often smaller and odder than that. It sits at one table, in one back room, and it works through favours, introductions and a cut of every deal. This page is about mafia games you can play online, and about one that is about running a street rather than a city.

Our picks, not a ranking. Facts about other games are checked against the sources at the bottom.

Mafia games online, at a glance

Our picks

Omerta

Omerta launched in browsers on 26 September 2003, and it is still running. It is a text-based multiplayer game where you play an American gangster in the 1930s, working your way up the ranks of organised crime alongside, and against, other players. It was a free-to-play pioneer with no banner adverts; since 2015 it has sold content unlock codes for players who want more. If you want the classic “rise through the family” mafia game with real people, this is the long-runner.

Torn

Torn is a text-based online RPG set in Torn City, a grim underworld where only the sharpest survive. You build a character from scratch, join a faction, take jobs, invest and travel, and the other players are the rival crews. Its own site says there is no advertising and it will always be free. It is less a mafia story than a whole crime society, run by its players.

AJ Cities: the Warden’s table

Our own game. It is free in your browser on a phone or a computer, and it is 18+. You do not play the boss. You play AJ, deported from London to Lagos with nothing, living in Room 3 of Iloro House on June 12 Street, on the edge of Ajegunle. The boss is the man at the end of the street.

The Warden is Chief Lazarus Ekanem. He worked thirty-one years at Kirikiri prison, just across the road, first as a warder and then as a senior officer. He retired with a gold watch and, people whisper, a copy of every key. He bought the big house at No. 1145, named it Prizm, and lit the sign purple. His explanation: a prism takes plain light and makes it colours, and a prison takes colourful people and makes them plain. He has done both.

Here is what makes him a different kind of mob boss:

• He does not sell anything. He connects. At the back booth on Prizm’s ground floor, an importer who needs a container cleared at the ports meets a man who knows a man; a contractor meets someone with a signature; a seller meets a buyer.
• Ten percent for the table. He introduces, he hosts, he witnesses, and he takes his cut. He never signs and never touches the goods.
• Security everywhere. His boys in black, two retired warders he trusts, and friends in uniform he “takes care of”.
• He thinks the estate is a smaller prison, and that he is still in charge of it.
• He remembers every naira anyone has ever owed him, and calls every young man “my son”.

And lately he has heard about a young man at Iloro House with a London accent. To the Warden, a London accent means connections abroad. He has a small errand in mind.

Around that table, the rest of the street runs its own small rackets. The gate police, Sola and Tunde, want ₦2,500,000 to open the north gate and will take it little by little. A bookie in the bush takes bets on the street football. AJ’s neighbour Dozie is “in opportunities”. Nobody runs the city. Everybody is trying to run a corner of the street.

You can read the Warden’s story, from his thirty-one years at Kirikiri to the week he hears about AJ and decides on an errand, and AJ’s story, which ends with a handshake outside Prizm. Then decide whether you would have shaken his hand. Everyone in it is fictional.

Want the big mafia story too?

If you have a console or gaming PC and are happy to pay, these are often recommended, and none of them is a browser game:

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

Street or city?

A city-sized mafia game is about climbing. A street-sized one is about living under someone else’s climb. Both are worth playing. Omerta and Torn give you the climb with other people. The big console games give you the climb as a film. AJ Cities gives you the view from Room 3, looking down June 12 Street at a purple sign, with a debt to the police and an invitation you probably should not accept.

More: gangster games online, free and the best crime story games.

What mafia games can I play online free?

Omerta and Torn run in a browser and are free to play. AJ Cities is a free 18+ browser game about a Lagos street where the Warden takes ten percent of every deal.

Is Omerta still online?

Yes. It launched in browsers on 26 September 2003 and is still running, free to play with paid unlock codes since 2015.

Can you play the Warden in AJ Cities?

No. You play AJ, a deportee starting again with nothing. The Warden is the fictional club owner at the end of the street who wants something from him.