FROM AFTERWORK STUDIO
POLIS
“Govern your city. Not the city you want — the one you were handed.”
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: 200 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
- 200 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 coffee house 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 that get "absorbed", contractors who "happen to pass by", journalists who dig, priests, goats in the square, tycoon weddings that close off streets.
Over 750 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.
Choose a road to victory — economic powerhouse, green paradise, innovation hub, European Capital of Culture — or choose the other road: get rich quietly, keep the prosecutor away, and don't get caught. You win elections, you lose elections, and in the end the town will remember what you left it.
What you will find inside
200 turns, 17 years
Every turn is a month; every four years ends at the ballot box. Four elections, each with its own authored content — right through the events of the fourth term.
750+ events
Each with 2-4 real choices. There is no "correct" answer — only consequences.
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.
Greek reality as a system
EU funds and farm subsidies, property tax and municipal fees, planning and land use, the archaeological service, the power grid, water supply, the housing market and Airbnb, a local press with a memory, patronage, seasonal tourism, demographics.
The opposition never sleeps
A permanent leader who builds support, comments on every decision you make and waits for you at the ballot box.
A council of thirteen
Seven votes for a simple majority, nine for the big ones. Eleven methods of persuasion across three moral tiers: five clean, three grey, three dark.
The local bodies vote
The merchants' association, the parents' association, the labour centre, the youth council, the diocese, farmers, environmentalists — and the football club's supporters. They push the ballot box, and you can see it happen.
75+ citizens, two generations
1,500+ life states: marriages, departures, returns, old age. And a third generation grows up inside their letters.
The town's football club
70+ sporting events with a league system. A president, a terrace, debts and demands — different in every town.
13 towns across two worlds
Six ordinary places and seven "impossible" scenarios.
Eight decade visions
Long-run stories with milestones, not checkboxes.
Six roads to victory, 12+ endings
Reaching the goal is not enough; you have to hold it. And every game ends with the "Term Award", based on how you governed: from "Clean Hands" to "The Accountant of Chaos".
The map as a storyteller
1,200 hand-painted hexes, ten overlays for every side of the town, seasons and weather that change it.
From the game
Five ways to play
- TutorialA guided introduction of about 20 turns, with no critical events.
- StandardThe full game through all 200 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. Stay ahead of the prosecutor."
Plus four difficulty levels — from Beginner to "Greek Reality" — and a fully adjustable Custom mode with sliders. Before the first turn you also choose who you are: a background, two traits and a political stance. Along the way, 90+ achievements with Greek names.
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.