← City Stakes · Ilmara

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Last updated 1 September 2026

City Stakes is a 3D city you can walk around, and a marketplace running inside it. You can ignore the marketplace entirely and just explore — that is a deliberate design goal, not a concession.

Getting around

Camera	Drag to orbit · scroll to zoom · right-drag to pan · click a building or screen to inspect it
V	Stand up and walk. C switches third and first person, Shift runs, E inspects whatever the crosshair is on, V again sits back down.
F	Get into the nearest parked car within 6 m. G calls one over when there is none nearby. F again to get out.
H	Take over the helicopter already flying over the city — nothing is spawned for you. W/S fly, A/D turn, Q/E change height, arrow keys strafe.
C	While driving or flying: chase, interior, cinematic.
Space	Handbrake.
P	Photo mode — letterbox, aspect ratios, exposure, and the current photo brief.
/ · Esc	Search · close whatever is open.

The marketplace

Owning a building

Every tower has a price. Claim an unclaimed one at its base value, or outbid the current owner — the minimum is 5% above the standing bid. Ownership is public. Your company's rank is the total value of everything it holds, and rank #1 gets the crown beacon and the brightest treatment in the city.

Renting attention

Advertising inventory is separate from ownership: you can advertise on a building somebody else owns. Every placement has a size, a visibility score and a daily rate. Campaigns run for 1, 7 or 30 days, then the slot frees up.

The two impression numbers

They are never added together, because they are different kinds of number.

Modelled	Derived from the placement's authored reach, its visibility, the district's footfall and the season. Ilmara counts no human beings for this figure, and every surface that shows it says "modelled".
Measured	Counted from players who were actually in front of the board — close enough to read it, on the right side of it, and held there long enough to take it in. A game figure, not an audited advertising metric. Nothing is charged on it.

The rest of the city

• Other people. If someone else is in your district you will see them walking around. They see you too.
• Crews. A group is people sharing one company. The founder mints an invite code; anyone with the code can join.
• The photo competition. Everyone shoots the same brief, which rotates every six hours. Entries are ranked on what the camera can verify — never on how the picture looks.
• Seasons. Monsoon, festival and winter change the sky, the weather and the economy, and each carries its own standing.
• Races. Four routes — driving, on foot and airborne — against a ghost of your own best run.
• Discovery. Viewpoints are found by being there, not by following a marker. Nothing is pinned on the map on purpose.

Credits and money

Credits are the in-city currency. New companies start with enough to play for free. Real money only ever buys credits — it never buys buildings, rank or outcomes directly. See the Terms for what credits are and are not.

Something wrong?

If the city will not load, the most common cause is a browser or driver without working WebGL 2. The city also steps its own quality down automatically on slower machines rather than dropping frames.