A Clockwork Ancient City Built For PC Players
Streets of Fortuna is an upcoming sandbox survival sim that first showed up during the PC Gaming Show 2024. It has been quietly growing into one of the most interesting simulation focused games on the horizon, especially for players who love deep systems and emergent stories on PC.
The game is being developed by Kitfox Games, and there is a big name helping shape its design. Tarn Adams, co creator of Dwarf Fortress, has been lending his expertise to the team. If you know anything about Dwarf Fortress, you can guess what that means. Lots of simulation under the hood, lots of tiny details, and a city that feels alive even when you are not looking.
Streets of Fortuna is inspired by the ancient city of Constantinople. Instead of a fantasy kingdom or generic medieval town, you are dropped into a bustling, unforgiving ancient city where survival is not guaranteed and reputation really matters. It is built from the ground up as a PC game, with a focus on systems driven gameplay rather than scripted storylines.
Life In Fortuna: Survival, Crime And Opportunity
In Streets of Fortuna you play as an ordinary person trying to survive and maybe even thrive in a dangerous ancient metropolis. The city does not treat you kindly. If you are caught sleeping rough, the city guard might beat you for vagrancy. Get on the wrong side of the wrong people and you could find yourself on the receiving end of a public beating in the market.
That harshness is part of the appeal. Where there is danger, there is also opportunity. The game aims to simulate a huge variety of possible lives. You might decide to climb to the top by embracing crime and corruption. Or you could try to stay honest and build a legitimate business in the middle of a city that runs on back alley deals.
Here are some of the paths the game teases:
- Become a thief and work the markets, picking pockets and pulling off elaborate heists.
- Use bribery and dirty tricks to rise through social ranks or gain powerful allies.
- Try to live clean and run a shop or service, building a reputation one customer at a time.
- Act as a vigilante and deal with criminals your own way in the streets.
The attraction of Streets of Fortuna is not just what you can do, but how the world reacts. The city is designed to feel like a living machine. Every character has relationships, habits, likes and dislikes. That means one small action can ripple outward in ways you did not expect.
One Thousand NPCs And A New Story Every Run
One of the standout features is the way NPCs are handled. The city constantly simulates around 1,000 NPCs going about their lives. They have homes, jobs, schedules, and social ties. They are not just background extras. They are participants in the same world you are trying to survive in.
This leads to some very Dwarf Fortress style possibilities. You might poison a rivals drink and then walk away, confident that you set everything up correctly. Somewhere in the city clockwork, schedules and traits will line up and your plan will unfold even when you are off doing something else. The game encourages this kind of long term, systems aware thinking.
The developers also say that number of NPCs is likely to increase as development goes on, which should make the simulation even richer. The more characters the game is tracking, the more unexpected stories can emerge.
On top of that, the entire city is procedurally generated. Every new playthrough gives you a fresh version of Fortuna, with different layout, different key locations and different networks of people. You are not memorizing a fixed map. You are learning how to read a dynamic city:
- New street layouts and districts on each run.
- Different social webs and rivalries between characters.
- Fresh opportunities for crime, commerce or social climbing every time.
Because of this, replay value is a major focus. The idea is that no two stories you create in Fortuna will be the same, even if you try to follow a similar path. A business run that went smoothly once could explode in your face the next time because different people control the local power structures.
When You Can Play Streets of Fortuna
The latest trailer for Streets of Fortuna closes with a key bit of info for PC players who want to get involved early. Kitfox Games is planning to bring in closed alpha testers in 2026. That is surprisingly close, considering how ambitious the simulation sounds.
If you are interested in following development or you want a shot at those early tests, you can wishlist Streets of Fortuna on Steam. That helps the devs gauge interest and keeps you in the loop for future updates, trailers and testing opportunities.
For players who enjoy deep, systems heavy PC games where you create your own stories rather than follow a fixed script, Streets of Fortuna is one to keep on the radar. A procedurally generated ancient city, one thousand simulated NPCs, and design input from the co creator of Dwarf Fortress all point toward a game that could become a favorite in the emergent storytelling and simulation niche.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/events-conferences/streets-of-fortuna-is-a-survival-megasim-set-in-an-ancient-city-where-you-can-take-down-an-overlord-start-your-own-religion-or-otherwise-live-your-best-life/
