Navigating The City
Every neighborhood and borough in The City has its own unique flavor, culture, and persons of interest. This page contains details on the areas where our investigators are most likely to live, work, and play.
La Colonia de Sombras
Think Spanish Harlem. Not the safest neighborhood, but a place with a lot of beauty and heart—and the best molé in town, of course. Big immigrant community, lots of Spanish spoken on the streets.
Best place to eat: Taquería El Dorado
Neighborhood pride: Huerta High, where Los Lobos are on a winning streak in the new stadium!
Lakeside Drive
Mostly upper middle-class neighborhood with a park-like vibe to it. Lots of greenspaces and not too many reasons to be here if you aren’t a resident (or, like a number of people form La Colonia, working for a resident). A few mansions, including the estate of one of the town big-wigs, are situated on the small lake that runs through the north end of the neighborhood. During summer, there’s great paddleboarding, as long as you watch out for the motorboats!
Best place to eat: your friend’s backyard
Neighborhood pride: The lake! The one real reason people from outside the neighborhood visit is for a picnic or boat ride. There’s just something magical about dusk on the water with the towers of downtown in the distance.
Fritzberg
Once a middle-class neighborhood with a tight-knit community, the area’s taken a downturn. Not long ago, a real estate investment for a mall and business complex went bust, and the hopes of a reinvigorating the area died. Many residents left, and the few that remain have the hardened look of someone waiting for a disaster. It just feels a little colder here. But the people, though gruff, always seem to have a place by the fire for a friend or a stranger.
Best place to eat: A restaurant called Moose may not sound like a dining gem, but if you’re craving hot and hearty, it’ll hit the spot.
Neighborhood pride: home crafts and hospitality.
Happyville
Oh, suburbia, with its Karens, cat-ladies and other crazies. You probably have a relative living here. The houses all look the same, and life may seem a little dull compared to the city center, but sometimes dull isn’t a bad thing. There’s an ease to the area that almost sucks you in, a pocket of people just like you to befriend, and a nice house at the right price with good neighbors and a sense of safety and pride that people just don’t feel anywhere else in the city.
Best place to eat: The country club… if you can get it.
Neighborhood pride: City Mayor, Grant Malcore, hosts a murder mystery gala every year, and an invitation is on everyone’s most wanted list!
Neighborhood shame: Crescent Moon Drive-in Theater—infamous teen hangout and the source of nearly all the neighborhood’s dirty gossip and urban legends.
Fortune Row
Where the nightlife never ends, fortunes are made and lost, and love is all consuming, even if only for the night. If you want a visual of rags-to-riches (and back), cruise the Snake, the figure-8 shaped street curving through Fortune Row from the high-rise high-rollers at the Zodiac Casino to the slums just around the curve. But it’s a lot more fun to stay where the action is hot and the stars of the city like to spend their not-so-hard-earned cash.
Best place to eat: The Grand Ball, a unique casino where lives sporting matches are the entertainment and the audience sits at tables instead of stands, where some of the best food and best competition in the city can be experienced at once. A lucky bet might even get you your meal for free!
Neighborhood Pride: The Zodiac Hotel and Casino, the highest high-rise of them all. For a less expensive dining option, check out their all-you-can-eat buffet, or for a splashy show that won’t cost a dime, find a spot in the crown to watch their nightly fireworks display, complete with an orchestra and dancing showgirls.
Chinatown
Campus
Old Quarter
Independence
While a lot people shun this side of town as “the hood” or whatever racist stereotype they want to throw out, the people of Independence know better. Here, pride keeps the neighborhood heartbeat strong marginalized group that has lived ...
Miller's Square
Tenements and apartment blocks, laundry strung between buildings, corner stores and pawn shops and laundromats with their fluorescent spill. The streets are loud during the day and dead quiet at night.
Tourist Trap
Boardwalk, Ferris wheel, carnival rides, themed restaurants, nightclubs that don't card and don't ask. By day, families spend money in the giant department stores and water parks. After dark, the adults come out to play — and so does everything hunting them. Hot pink and electric cyan fight each other across wet asphalt, neither winning, the noise the point rather than the seduction.
Everything here is tacky, flashy, and overpriced, which is exactly the cover. The loudest places in the City are also the easiest to operate in undetected.
