Neon Barons is a long-haul trading game: a few minutes a day, sales that run while you're away, a neighbourhood growing in 3D and a city shared with other players. Here's everything you need to know, straight from the in-game help.
You're a small-time dealer in a Paris arrondissement. Your goal: grow your block until you become a baron of the city.
The game comes down to five moves: buy goods (black market or the street), sell them to the trade from your stock, cash in when a sale is done, deliver contracts to earn reputation, and level up once you have enough reputation and Creds.
Sales run on their own, even when you're not playing. Come back when it rings.
At the start, you pick a career: Synth food, Data brokers, Pirate cyberware, Armoury or Infrastructure. Each has its own products, across five tiers.
You can buy and sell anything, but your career's products sell 20 % faster to the trade, and street dealers offer them to you more often.
Contracts mostly ask for your career's products.
In the Trade tab, "Sell at the trade" puts a whole product on sale. The sale runs by itself, in a few minutes or a few hours depending on the product.
A sale brings in the market price plus a margin of 12 to 30 %, and the bonuses from your buildings and your crew.
How many sales can run at once depends on your Counter. On your block, every sale in progress is a delivery drone.
When a sale is done, a golden coin spins above the Counter: tap it, or go through "Your sales", to cash in.
The selling price at the trade follows how much of each product the whole city has sold over the last 24 hours. A product nobody sells goes for up to 8% more ("high demand"); a product everyone sells loses up to 15% ("saturated").
What counts is the moment you start the sale. Mixing up your products pays off: check the tags in Trade.
A contract asks you to deliver a quantity of a product. It pays Creds, reputation (REP) and experience.
How many contracts you can deliver per day depends on your Contacts office. If you're short on goods, the contract offers to buy them on the black market.
From level 5, a very big contract arrives every day, then a gold contract at level 9. They're required for the last levels.
Each level requires reputation and Creds (and, at levels 6 to 10, very big contracts and gold contracts). The goals button shows where you stand.
Levelling up gives you a new HQ, unlocks new products roughly every two levels, and raises everything else.
The street in front of your block follows your level too: rubbish bags at first, then a pedestrian crossing and bollards (level 3), planters (level 5), a neon kerb and road markings (level 7), and a lit forecourt (level 9).
The previous level's contracts are replaced by the new level's.
Your block has five buildings, each with its own job: the Warehouse (what you can store), the Counter (sales at once and better prices), the Buying network (buying cap), the Contacts office (contracts per day) and the Stash (protection against the cops).
Tap a building to expand it. Each level costs Creds and a construction; only one construction at a time.
A building can't go higher than your player level.
In a hurry? A construction can be finished right away for Neons: 1 Neon per 6 minutes left (5 minimum), 3 times a day per city. It's the only thing Neons can speed up: sales, purchases and contracts, never.
Level 10 isn't the end: your reputation keeps counting. Each step beyond the level 10 reputation gives you a baron rank, up to rank 10.
The first rank takes 1,000 REP more, the second 2,000 more again, and each rank after that a bit more. Each rank gives +1% on your sales (up to +10%) and some Neons to collect once, on the level sheet.
On your HQ tower, one band of windows turns gold with each rank, from the top down; at the last rank, a gold crown turns on the roof.
Nothing resets: your block, your factories and your group stay yours.
The game is played across several Paris arrondissements: the 11th, the 18th and the 13th. Each is a city of its own, with its players, its chat, its crews, its rankings, its districts and its events.
You pick your city at the start, before your career. Later, you can settle in another one from the player menu (City section): you start over there, with a new plot and a new career if you like. Your plot in the first city waits for you, and you switch between them whenever you want.
When you play in several cities, a red dot on your avatar tells you something is waiting elsewhere. In the player menu, City section, that city gets a badge with the details: sales to cash in, next level ready, construction finished, unread private messages.
What belongs to your whole account: your avatar, your Neons, your cosmetics and your friends.
The real Paris sun sets the city's rhythm, and each time of day gives you a small boost. The clock at the top of the screen shows which one is on.
By day, legal trade is busy: your sales go 5% faster. At night, the buying network runs flat out: +10% on black market limits. At dawn and dusk, it's crew hour: your deliveries to the weekly order are worth 10% more.
These are bonuses, never penalties: someone who plays at lunchtime isn't at a disadvantage, they just get a different perk. What counts is the moment you start the sale, the purchase or the delivery.
About one 4-hour period in two, the city goes through an event, the same for every player. It's announced in the "Flash news" banner and by Bobaman.
Shortage: one career's products sell for 30 % more. Party night: sales go 35 % faster. Shipment: the black market drops by 20 %. Curfew: sales go 30 % slower, but pay 15 % more.
What counts is the event at the moment you start the sale (or make the purchase). The next event is shown in advance.
From level 3, the cops can raid your block. The risk is about 10 % per day, adjusted by your buildings.
A raid seizes 40 % of what's exposed: your stock and the earnings of sales in progress.
The Stash protects part of your goods and lowers the risk. Bobaman tells you what happened when you come back.
Tip: don't let a big stock sit idle, put it up for sale.
From level 5, you can join a crew or found one (100,000 ¢). A crew holds up to 10 members: a boss, lieutenants and members.
Members feed the treasury with their donations, and delivered contracts earn the crew experience. With both, the boss or a lieutenant levels the crew up.
Every week, the crew receives an order to fill together (see "The crew order"). You can also give goods to a member, if they have room in their warehouse.
Crew levels unlock its chat, lieutenants, then an income bonus for all members.
The crew goes up to level 8: a banner to set (level 3, colour and emblem, more emblems in the shop), members shown "online" (level 4), better-paid daily contracts (level 6), more profitable districts held (level 7) and a doubled weekly-order bonus (level 8).
Each city has five districts (in the 11th: Oberkampf, Bastille, République, Voltaire and Charonne; in the 18th: Montmartre, Pigalle, Barbès, La Chapelle, Clignancourt; in the 13th: Les Olympiades, Butte-aux-Cailles, Tolbiac, Place d'Italie, Masséna). Every week, the city's crews fight over them.
The boss or a lieutenant picks the district their crew is targeting, in the crew screen. The crew's influence is the reputation earned this week by all its members: delivering contracts, finishing missions, everything counts.
On Monday, the most influential crew in each district takes it for the week: its members sell 5 % higher per district held. The city hears about it through the "Flash news".
Nobody loses anything: a district can be taken back the following week. Switching targets at the end of the week is allowed: what counts is the influence when the tally is made.
In the city screen, the rankings can be read several ways: the week, the season, total reputation, fortune, level, and crews (ranked by their members' total reputation). A menu lets you see only the players of one career.
The week and the season count the reputation earned since they began: the week starts on Monday at midnight (Paris time), the season lasts a quarter. Everyone starts from zero, beginners included.
The top three of a week receive 50, 30, 20 Neons, those of a season 200, 120, 80 Neons. The prize arrives the first time you open the game after the period ends, and the city hears about it through the "Flash news".
The five buildings of your block (Warehouse, Counter, Buying network, Contacts office, Stash) can change style: Industrial ruin, Neo-Tokyo, Art deco or Glass and chrome. A style follows the building at every level.
One by one, each piece dresses a single building; they show up in the shop window like other cosmetics, and you can mix styles from one building to the next.
As a pack, in the Packs tab, always on sale: all five pieces of a style in one go, much cheaper than one by one. Pieces you already own are taken off the price: you never pay twice. The whole style goes on when you buy.
The Preview button shows the style on your block before you buy. Like any cosmetic, a style gives no gameplay advantage, and visitors see it.
The premium subscription brings 300 Neons every month (collect them in the player menu), the exclusive Aurora neon, a neon colour that never shows up in the shop window and stays yours after the subscription, and the ◆ badge next to your nickname in chat, rankings and visits.
Style and comfort, never speed: premium does nothing for sales, purchases or contracts, and doesn't make constructions cheaper.
Payment for the subscription is coming soon.