Bringing Project Kingpin to Life: A Major UI Overhaul
Over the past several months, our development efforts on Project Kingpin, our upcoming crime strategy and gangster management game, have focused heavily on building the core systems that power Union City. From managing criminal operations and commanding gang members to navigating rival organizations and law enforcement, we’ve been laying the foundation for the game’s strategic sandbox.
This month, our focus shifted toward something much more visible: bringing those systems together through a completely redesigned user interface.
As part of this process, we spent considerable time revisiting Gangsters: Organized Crime, a classic gangster strategy game that continues to serve as an important benchmark and inspiration for Project Kingpin. While we admire its strategic depth and ambition, we also took a critical look at areas where its user interface could make managing a criminal empire unnecessarily cumbersome.
We identified two major opportunities to improve the player experience:
1. A More Intuitive User Experience
We wanted to make navigating a complex criminal organization feel natural rather than overwhelming. This meant rethinking interface layouts, simplifying access to important information, and making the tools players use most frequently easier to find and interact with.
2. Clearer Information for Better Strategic Decisions
A great strategy game isn’t just about making decisions; it’s about understanding the consequences of those decisions. We placed particular emphasis on how information is presented, helping players understand what happened during a workday, evaluate the results of their actions, and use that knowledge to shape their organization’s next moves.
Our goal is to create a gameplay experience where players can more easily follow the chain of events unfolding across Union City, recognize opportunities and threats, and make informed decisions about the future of their criminal empire.
This was a significant investment of time and effort across our design, art, and engineering teams, but we believe it’s one of the most important improvements we can make to the overall experience.
And September wasn’t just about creating mockups. We also made substantial progress implementing these designs directly into the game, bringing us another major step closer to a cohesive, playable crime management sim.
A New Look at Criminal Empire Management
At the center of September’s work was the design and implementation of Project Kingpin’s main Heads-Up Display (HUD).
The HUD serves as the player’s primary command center, providing access to the information, tools, and systems needed to run a criminal organization.
Alongside the HUD, we designed interfaces covering nearly every major aspect of the game:
- Gang Management & Reports: Keep track of your organization’s members, resources, and performance.
- Businesses & Criminal Operations: Manage both legitimate businesses and illegal operations across Union City.
- Rival Organizations: Access information about competing gangs as you navigate the city’s criminal underworld.
- Police & Law Enforcement: Monitor law enforcement activity and the growing pressure on your organization.
- Lieutenants: Oversee the trusted members responsible for helping manage your expanding empire.
- Messaging & Notifications: Stay informed as events unfold across the city.
Each interface was designed with a common objective: make managing a criminal empire more intuitive while giving players the information they need to make meaningful strategic decisions.
Our approach to UI design is about more than aesthetics. We want Project Kingpin to deliver the depth players expect from a gangster strategy game without making the experience unnecessarily complicated.
Introducing Map Overlays: Turning Union City into a Strategic Tool
One of Project Kingpin’s central design philosophies is that the city itself should be a strategic tool.
This month, we made substantial progress on the map overlay system, which allows players to switch between different views of Union City to better understand what’s happening around them.
Rather than relying solely on menus, players will be able to use the city map to locate gang members, identify businesses, and interpret important events.
These tactical map overlays are intended to make information more accessible, helping players assess their surroundings and better understand the opportunities and threats facing their criminal organization.
The goal is simple: give players the information they need to make smarter decisions, while making Union City itself an integral part of the strategy gameplay experience.
Give Your Orders. Run the City.
Another major area of development was the Orders Phase UI, a central component of Project Kingpin’s gang management gameplay.
Project Kingpin operates around a workday-based gameplay loop. Players plan their moves, issue orders to their organization, and then watch those decisions play out as the workday unfolds.
September saw significant progress on the interfaces supporting this experience, including giving orders, reviewing assigned orders, and managing the actions of your gang members.
Whether you’re sending someone to scout a rival’s territory, run an illegal operation, or prepare an attack, our goal is to make commanding your organization both intuitive and strategically satisfying.
Just as important, the new interface is being designed to help players understand the outcomes of their decisions. By making information easier to review and interpret, we want players to spend less time searching through menus and more time planning their next moves.
Every order is a decision, and every decision has consequences.
From UI Design to In-Game Implementation
What makes September particularly exciting is that this wasn’t simply a month of creating concepts and mockups.
We also made substantial progress turning those designs into working interfaces inside the game.
Our engineering team implemented much of the new UI foundation, including core HUD elements, messaging functionality, map overlays, and the orders interface.
This represents an important milestone in Project Kingpin’s development. As more of our underlying gameplay systems become accessible through the new interface, the experience is beginning to come together as a cohesive crime strategy game.
There’s still work ahead in refining interactions, integrating remaining screens, and polishing the overall experience, but the difference is already substantial.
With each passing milestone, we’re getting closer to putting the tools of a criminal empire directly into players’ hands.
What’s Next? The Road to Project Kingpin Player Testing
With much of our new UI framework now in place, our goal over the next two weeks is to complete the implementation of the remaining interfaces, bringing us another major step closer to a fully integrated gameplay experience.
At the same time, we’re dedicating increasing attention to internal playtesting, tuning, and balancing. With our core systems coming together, we’re now able to spend more time evaluating how they interact, refining gameplay mechanics, and improving the overall experience.
We’re also rapidly advancing the development of Union City itself, bringing more of the city’s buildings, neighborhoods, and environments to life. As the map continues to evolve, so does the strategic sandbox at the heart of Project Kingpin.
Most importantly, we’re rapidly approaching one of our most anticipated milestones: getting Project Kingpin into the hands of players.
Our goal is to begin player testing before the end of 2026. While there’s still work to be done, this is the closest we’ve ever been to reaching that milestone, and we couldn’t be more excited.
After years of planning, designing, and developing Project Kingpin, the opportunity to finally share our crime strategy game with players is becoming a reality.
We can’t wait to see how you build your criminal empire.
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