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Rules

Last updated 7 September 2026

Short version: buy a plot, build floors, fill them with real things your company does. Long version below.

The city

  1. There are 64 plots. One company property per website, occupying one or two plots. When they’re gone, they’re gone.
  2. The first 9 companies to buy are founding tenants. That badge stays on the tower permanently and is never given out again.
  3. A plot is yours for life. No subscription, no renewal, nothing to cancel. See the terms for what “for life” means in practice.

What things cost

  1. Floors are $0.50 each, multiplied by your land value, paid once. A 12-floor tower on empty land is $6.00.
  2. Land value is set by your neighbours. It’s 1 plus the total floors on the eight adjoining plots divided by 100, capped at three times. Build tall and you make the land around you more expensive for everyone else.
  3. Adding floors later is priced at whatever the land is worth that day, so early plots stay cheap.
  4. Facade lettering is $2 per letter, once. Up to 12 characters across the front of your building.
  5. The hiring board is free. So is picking your tower’s colour, furnishing floors, and everything inside.

Expand your property

Owners can buy one empty plot sharing a boundary with their existing plot. Diagonals and plots across a road cannot merge. Each property can occupy at most two plots, with one wider building and one company profile. Both parcels count toward the 64-plot limit.

Expansion costs your existing floor count multiplied by the new parcel’s current floor rate. Your existing purchase stays credited, and your own property is excluded from the neighbour surcharge. At the base rate, widening a 10-floor tower onto a second plot costs $5 once.

After expansion, added floors span both parcels. Their price is the sum of each parcel’s floor charge, excluding the property itself from the neighbour surcharge. Ten extra floors across two plots cost $10 at the base rate. Shared floor content, facade lettering and free owner tools remain attached to the original company profile. Expanded parcels cannot currently be split or sold separately.

Inside your tower

  1. Every floor holds one real thing. A product, a team, a project, a customer story. Write the lines like signs on a door, not like a landing page.
  2. Some floor names furnish themselves. Lobby, Cafe, Washroom, Car park, Gym, Meeting room and Server room each get their own scene. Everything else gets a desk per line.
  3. A floor can be marked top secret. It shows in the building but only opens for someone holding the key you hand out. Anyone with that key can pass it on, so give it to people you trust.
  4. Your tower’s colour comes from your own website, or any colour you pick.

Getting noticed

  1. The standings board ranks by height. Nothing else counts.
  2. The press crew parks outside whichever tower sent the most people to its own website that day. Counted once per visitor per tower per day.
  3. The hiring board puts a “we’re hiring” sign on your plot in your colour, and points wherever you like.

What isn’t allowed

  1. Facade lettering and floor text that’s abusive, hateful, or sexual. Buildings are removed and refunded for this, not argued about.
  2. Claiming a website that isn’t yours to represent.
  3. Malware, scams, and anything that would make a visitor regret clicking through to your site.

Who built this

Downtown is made by Raj Sajnani, one person in Bangalore, at JustADev. If something breaks, or you want a plot moved, or you just want to argue about the land value formula, write to raj@downtown.company and a human answers.