FROM AFTERWORK STUDIO
POLIS
“Govern your city. Not the city you want — the one you were handed.”
The Steam page is in the works.
POLIS is not a city-builder — you do not place roads on an empty grid. You take charge of a real Greek town, with its debts, its regulations, its cliques and its football club, and you govern it turn by turn: 204 turns, 17 years in office, four trips to the ballot box. Every decision has consequences, every citizen has a name, and the town remembers all seventeen years.
- Platforms
- Windows 10+ · macOS 12+ (Steam)
- Length
- 204 turns · 17 years in office
- Genre
- Political & governance simulation · Single-player
- Languages
- Greek & English
A small town at a crossroads
A small Greek town at a crossroads. A stone-paved square, a kafeneio with three old men, a school that needs painting — and you, the new mayor. POLIS is a municipal-governance simulation steeped in Greek reality: taxes and subsidies, EU funds being “absorbed”, contractors who drop by “by chance”, journalists who dig, priests, shepherds herding goats into the square, tycoon weddings that seal off streets.
Over 540 events with real dilemmas — no "correct" answers, only consequences. Citizens have names, families and memory; they write you letters, get angry, leave for Thessaloniki, come back, grow old, say goodbye.
Pick your road to victory — economic powerhouse, green paradise, innovation hub, European Capital of Culture — or pick the other road: get quietly rich, keep the prosecutor away, and don't get caught. You win elections, you lose elections, and in the end the city will remember what you left behind.
What you will find inside
204 turns, 17 years
Every turn is a month; every four years ends at the ballot box. Four elections, each with its own authored content — not recycled.
540+ events
Each with 2-4 real choices, advisor opinions and a preview of the consequences. There is no "correct" answer — only yours.
Decisions come back
A tax you passed on turn 12 can find you as a wildfire on turn 72. You are not playing against an AI — you are playing against your own record.
13 systems of Greek reality
EU funds and their deadlines, municipal law, property tax, planning permits and unauthorised building, forest maps, the shoreline, the archaeological service, the power grid, the local press, cliques and patronage.
The opposition never sleeps
A permanent leader with a name and a memory, keeping a file on every promise you broke. Questions in council, coalitions, and a no-confidence motion when they smell blood.
A council of eleven
Every vote needs 6 of 11. Nine ways to persuade across three moral tiers — from an appeal to ideology to outright bribery — and every lever leaves a trace.
70+ citizens, three generations
723 life states: marriages, departures, old age. They write you letters, run out of patience, leave — and their children judge you with different eyes.
The town’s football club
A president with a personality in every scenario, sponsors, derbies and relegations: 70+ sporting events. The terraces are a voting bloc — and a road to temptation.
13 towns across two worlds
Six ordinary places, from the Thessaly plain to the stone villages of Zagori — and seven "impossible" scenarios: bankrupt Kalamata, drowning Mykonos, emptying Drama.
Eight decade visions
From turn 10 you pick one, irrevocably: A City Without Corruption, Green Capital, No One Homeless, Brain Hub. Ten-year stories with milestones, not checkboxes.
Six roads to victory, 12+ endings
Reaching the goal is not enough — you have to hold it. And every ending has its own title, from "The Quiet Fixer" to a flight at dawn.
The map as a storyteller
1,200 hand-painted hexes, seasons and weather, passers-by, smoke from the chimneys. Scars from wildfires stay, and 13 overlays show the town from the inside.
From the game
Five ways to play
- TutorialA guided introduction of about 20 turns. Marina, Niki and the advisors introduce you to the town, with no critical events.
- StandardThe full game through all 204 turns, with victory goals and elections every four years.
- EndlessThere is no ending. You play as long as you can hold on — and as long as the ballot box lets you.
- SandboxAn experimental playground with every system unlocked. No winning, no losing.
- Dark Path"Get rich secretly. Don't get caught."
Plus five difficulty levels — from Beginner to "Greek Reality", and a custom one with your own sliders — and 71 achievements with Greek names such as "Iron Hand", "Triple Alpha" and "From the Garage to Glory". Before the first turn you also choose who you are: a background, two traits and a political identity.
POLIS is a work of fiction. All persons, companies, events and business schemes are fictional; any resemblance to real persons or events is coincidental. Exception: the Techlumen name is used with permission of Techlumen LED lighting — every depiction of it in the game is fiction.