Free Cities: Rebirth - Information

The world is crumbling around us.

The greed of humanity has led to a world where only a microscopic percentage of people hold virtually all of the world's wealth. Governments around the world have become little more than legitimization organizations to the corporations who have bought all vestiges of power. The average person is seen as little more than part of the market segment, their value measured in intensely precise algorithms balancing their work output and spending value. Standard education is dead, only the upper echelon of society have the luxury to learn freely, while the masses are educated using incredibly specialized work programs supplemented with propaganda.

"Extreme Weather" has been accepted as the ecological normal now for decades, and it seems each year is competing with those before it to be the most extreme. For a time humanity started working together to combat the changing climate, but these efforts were ultimately sabotaged when no profitable plan of action was proposed by the concerned. Between governmental corruption, corporate greed, growing international distrust, and a global rise in autocratic leaders preying on growing public fear and anxiety, what little change was actually enacted proved to be far too little, and much too late.

Human population was expected to peak back in the 21st century, but as life started getting harder, population growth instead sped up. As we enter the year 2107 the world's population is estimated to have reached 11.2 billion.

Over the last 30 years agriculture has been decimated by storms, heat waves, and rapidly expanding arid zones. Even the highest estimates project that relying solely on traditional agriculture could only produce enough food to feed 1.5 billion. The corporations have picked up the slack with their massive factory farms and synthetic meat plants. Human survival has become inextricably dependent on these powerful entities.

In the end it hardly matters as humanity is entirely doomed. Projections in the year 2093 stated that within 150 years the environment of the planet will become so hostile that the vast majority of life on the planet will die. Since then, the projections have been steadily more dire every year. All life on Earth suddenly had a rapidly approaching expiration date.

As always, those who have amassed power cling to it, using all the influence their wealth and power can wield. A number of projects were kicked off to try and save their tyrannies, and much of the wealthiest have given up on Earth. Retreating to the Atlas, which is best described as a self-sustaining mega-yacht in space, which now travels a meandering voyage through the solar system with all the luxuries their wealth could afford them.

There are a number of extra-planetary projects that were started, or expanded, to ensure some survive.

The Earth's two lunar bases, established in the latter half of the 2050’s with all the flair of a fad neighborhood, have now been stuffed beyond safe capacity, housing a combined 6,000 people.

The Green Mars project, which was the first successful colonization effort on Mars was rapidly expanded upon in a mass exodus. Its population has swelled from 2,500 to nearly 30,000 in only a decade.

Lastly the Genesis Project, spearheaded by a partnership between the Catholic Church and the EU launched five ships out of the solar system. These massive generation ships are each headed on a one-way journey to top candidate planets for human habitation, and contain nearly 2,500 people each. The last Genesis ship left earth orbit just last year.

While these grand space projects inspire humanity, and manage to save the humans as a race, they do little to help the dying planet. The most recent projections in fact show that we are expected to approach the collapse within 102 years. There are countless projects now to build bunkers and other hardened, self sustaining shelters, but the most promising of these is the Free Cities project.

Designed by the same geniuses who organized the Genesis Project, The Free Cities Project is an open source blueprint to building an Arcology — a massive and self sustaining building which furnishes everything humans need to survive and possibly even flourish. There are now dozens of Free Cities variations designed by the finest that remain on Earth, and over a hundred build sites around the world.

You refused to give up. You refused to escape. You refused to be a sheep.

You now find yourself the leader of one such new Arcology.

This is your story.

What is Free Cities: Rebirth?

Free Cities: Rebirth (FCR) is intended as a spiritual successor to Free Cities. It is a completely new game with completely new assets, being built in the Unity engine. FCR is intended to expand on the idea that was Free Cities, and by no means will be a clone of the game.

FCR will be a largely text based game built on branching story narratives, Arcology Management, with slaves (optionally: without slaves), a wide range of character customization and surgeries, diplomacy and military events, and a whole lot of sex.

FCR will follow the development of your Arcology as you prepare the collapse, your struggle to make it through a collapsed world, and finally your efforts to rebuild humanity on a planet beginning to normalize.

FCR will contain all new systems for building, research, warfare, and Arcology management. This includes an integrated corporate system, comprehensive planning, building, and upgrading of Arcology components, and a deep research system that will allow a wide array of development both in cyborg enhancements and genetic editing, including cross species hybridization, and synthetic brains.

While still primarily a text driven game, FCR will have:

A 3D Earth based overview map.

3D character models.

Additional UI and Environmental art.

Will FCR support mods?

FCR is being built from the ground up with mod support in mind. Mod development will be quite welcomed and encouraged. We will not host or provide technical support mods, mod usage will be at players own discretion, and mod authors will be responsible for providing any support.

When will FCR be available?

When it is ready. While we would love to be able to provide a concrete timeline, FCR is developed entirely by a team of volunteers.

Help Wanted!

As this is entirely a volunteer project, we welcome additional volunteers. Currently we have over 15 contributors across our Writer, Artist, and Programmer teams. We certainly welcome and would greatly be aided by additional contributors. If you're interested in helping with this project, please just message in our Discord #Volunteer channel.