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CENTAVO
A city sim where money never comes from nowhere. Tens of thousands of residents, each with a name, a job and a pocket. You lay the streets, zone and set taxes; they buy the lots, open businesses and leave if work or food runs out. Grow a camp into a metropolis.

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Features
Single-player
Steam Cloud
Family Sharing
Steam is learning about this game 
Languages:
Interface Full Audio Subtitles
English ✔
Portuguese - Brazil ✔

Coming Soon To Early Access

The developers of this game intend to release as a work in progress, developing with the feedback of players.

Note: Games in Early Access are not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“CENTAVO is an economy simulation where every cent is in someone's pocket, and the player's behaviour is part of the experiment. So far the city has been tested with a scripted player that always zones the same way. Real people zone differently, tax differently, and let the city die in ways I didn't foresee. That is what Early Access buys: cities I wouldn't know how to build, and the problems only they reveal. The game is made by one person, and I would rather tune the balance together with the people playing it than alone.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“The estimate is between one year and a year and a half. Leaving Early Access is not tied to a date but to a criterion: the city sustaining itself in the hands of real players, not only the scripted one, and a saved city surviving any update. If that takes longer, the game stays in Early Access longer.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“We plan, without promising order or dates:

A real tutorial. Today the progression ladder plays that role: each step unlocks the next brushes, which prevents the fatal early mistakes, but it doesn't yet teach the why behind each thing.

A fuller government panel. Today there are two levers, income tax and government aid. We plan a progressive tax table, social programmes beyond the floor, adjustable service contracts and the arbitration of bids for the large businesses, which today is automatic.

School, police and crime already exist in the engine and arrive at the high steps of the ladder. We plan to adjust when and how they come in based on what the community reports.

Credit. Today the amount of money in the world is fixed. We plan to study loans, which bring back the tension between holding and issuing.

Ambient sound and effects, on top of the soundtrack that already plays. More languages on the page and in the interface as the community asks. Linux and macOS versions once the Windows version is stable.

And the exit commitment: in the full version, a saved city survives any update.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Playable from start to finish: the city starts empty, climbs the seven steps and can end by exodus, starvation or dry coffers. What the page description says is what exists: zoning and laying streets, residents who found and close businesses, walk, eat, fall ill, marry, inherit and leave, prices that react to stock and queues, every resident's statement with the counterparty of every payment, the heat maps, the statistics screen and the floor plan layer. Interface in Brazilian Portuguese and English. Windows only.

What to expect from Early Access: the balance still changes from version to version, because that is exactly what we are tuning with the people playing. The game saves your city's recipe (the seed and every click) and was designed to survive updates, but during Early Access some rule changes may alter a saved city. When that happens, the game warns you on load: the city is still valid, it just isn't exactly the one you left.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“We plan to raise the price gradually as the game gains content, up to the full version. Every increase will be announced in advance in the update notes. Whoever joins in Early Access pays less for having joined earlier, and gets the whole game all the way through.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“Through the Steam community hub: discussions, update notes with every version and a monthly state-of-the-game post, with the numbers behind each balance change. When a price, a wage or a rule changes, the note says what was measured and why.

One detail that changes the conversation: a CENTAVO save is a recipe, the seed and every click. Send me your city's file and I reproduce exactly the city you saw, at the point where it broke. Every bug reported with a save is a reproducible bug.

We plan to keep a public beta branch to test large updates before they reach everyone, and a Discord server for those who want to follow closely.”
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Planned Release Date: 2027

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About This Game

Every cent is in someone's pocket

CENTAVO is a city sim that starts from scratch: empty land, nobody living on it and a fixed amount of money in the world. You lay the streets and decide what can exist on each lot. The city grows to tens of thousands of residents, and every one of them is a person, with a name, a job, a family and their own money in their pocket. Nothing comes from nowhere: for someone to be paid, someone has to pay. And you watch it happen.

A city of people, not numbers

Click any resident and follow their life. They walk to work, buy food at the market and pay rent to whoever owns the house. Their children walk to school, eat the school lunch and study, and those who studied are more productive at work. Residents fall ill and pay the hospital, marry, grow old and die. The house passes to the spouse or the children; with no heir, the business passes to someone who worked there.

Not every story ends well. Someone with no job and no money may turn to theft; the police station locks them up, and whoever goes to jail loses their job. Those who find neither work nor food leave, and take their money with them. Those who arrive from outside come because there was a job that paid and a roof they could afford.

You zone. The residents build.

You zone the lots as Housing, Leisure, Production or Commerce and Services. Whoever buys the lot and opens a house, a market or a factory is a resident with money and an idea. If the business can't make the numbers work, it closes, and you demolish and zone again.
  • Building consumes real materials. With a materials factory and a hardware store, construction happens here, by a crew of residents, with hired hands from outside when they run short. Without them, the building comes prefabricated from outside, at a higher price, the public coffers pay while they can, and that money leaves the city.
  • The city grows and the game grows with it. The hospital and the sports court arrive in the Village; apartments, the plaza and the school in the Town; tower blocks, the police station and the theater in the City; the stadium in the Capital.
  • Leisure matters. The government keeps plazas and courts running by contract; theaters and stadiums live on tickets. A city with no leisure is an unhappier city.
  • Expropriate buys a resident's house above market price and rehouses the family before the demolition. If there is nowhere for them to go, the family refuses.

Money never comes from nowhere

The amount of money in the world is fixed: nobody prints it, nobody erases it. The wage a resident takes home came out of the market's till, which came out of a customer's pocket, which came out of another wage. Every payment has someone who pays and someone who gets paid, and you can see both.

Govern through the pocket

The town hall's coffers live on taxes, fines and the sale of lots and houses, and they can only spend what came in. You decide how much to charge and whom: wages, profit, dividends, rent, sales, wealth, inheritance and property. You can exempt whoever you want to protect, like the elderly, families with children or food. With that money, you switch on programs: an income floor for those left with nothing, insurance for those who lost their job, aid for whoever supports a child and a pension at the age and amount you choose. Whoever retires leaves their job, and the opening goes to someone else.

Every choice has a pocket on the other side. Tax too much and residents pack their bags. Tax too little and the coffers run dry, imported construction stops and the programs stop paying. Fall behind on property tax and you can lose the house.

Prices nobody programmed

The market buys from the farm and sells to residents, and the price reacts to the shelf and to the till: an empty shelf gets pricier, idle stock gets cheaper. Rent floats too: owners ask what they want, and newcomers turn down a house that costs too much. No price is set by decree, and the Prices tab shows the history of each one.

Open anyone's pocket

  • The record of any resident or building, with the complete statement, entry by entry. On every line, one click takes you to whoever paid or whoever got paid; click by click, you follow the chain of payments.
  • Heat maps: Well-being, Wealth, Land value, Crime and Money flow, which lights up the blocks money is moving through.
  • The city report, with 12 tabs going from population to businesses and the coffers' ledger, with series going back to day one.
  • Floor plan layer: the city seen from above, like a blueprint, to read the streets behind the buildings.

From Camp to Metropolis

The city climbs seven steps: Camp, Hamlet, Village, Town, City, Capital and Metropolis. The steps unlock new kinds of construction, taxes and programs, and shows the next goal in residents, buildings and money. The money goal counts everything inside the city: in residents' pockets, in business tills and in the coffers. What went abroad doesn't count.

And the city can end: by exodus, by starvation, or by coffers that ran dry and never recovered. When it ends, you can restart the same city, with the same seed, and try something else.

Made by one person

CENTAVO is made by a single developer. Everything described on this page is already in the game; what is still going to change is in the Early Access section.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Interface text and the English translation were drafted with an AI assistant and reviewed by the developer. No art, audio or content is AI generated, and nothing is generated at runtime.

System Requirements

    Minimum:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 10 64-bit
    • Processor: Quad-core, 2.5 GHz
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: DirectX 12 compatible GPU with 2 GB VRAM
    • DirectX: Version 12
    • Storage: 500 MB available space
    • Additional Notes: The simulation runs on the CPU: more cores let a larger city run smoothly.
    Recommended:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
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