The most interesting gameplay element about MegaCryptoPolis’ relaunch as MCPOLIS is that this time its citizens will have to commute. It’s a big shift from the city sim’s previous version in which citizens could be active everywhere all at once.
Now, a citizen who takes a job on the other side of town has to get there and afterwards find somewhere to recover their stamina. A better-paying job might leave them worse off once they’ve paid for transport and a bed. The idea is that you can work all this out yourself or give your AI agent control of your citizen and their wallet and let it figure things out.
The original MegaCryptoPolis, which launched in 2018 had an economy built around land, buildings and resource production. Under the old system, owners assigned citizens directly to their buildings. Now buildings will advertise jobs with wages and qualification requirements, and citizens will apply and work by the hour.
That makes the location of housing and transport more important. A factory with cheap inputs might still struggle to turn a profit if it has to pay a premium to attract workers.
Resource trading is changing too. An order book will replace the old pack-based system, and each building will hold its own inventory. Owners can buy inputs when they’re cheap and stockpile them against a future shortage. Goods still move instantly when sold, although the team is considering physical deliveries for a future update. For now, the city’s geography will matter much more to workers than to the goods they produce.
Players will be able to switch between controlling a citizen directly and letting an agent act on their behalf. The game’s Model Context Protocol interface is designed to give agents access to the same information and actions as people using the browser client. Each citizen gets a wallet, with payments settled in USDC using the x402 agent payment protocol.
The first test will be Newick, a demo city designed to keep costs and risks close to zero. Players will be able to bring in existing citizens and return them to their home cities, while citizens created or acquired in Newick will stay there.
MCPOLIS expects to share opening details after 12th November and aims to let players try the new gameplay before year-end. Newick should show whether running a team of agents is fun. The legacy cities will show what happens when those teams are competing for wages people can cash out.
Sign up at the MCPOLIS website.