Guides

How-to-play guides

Practical guides for city builders and idle tycoons: how to start, where to put your roads, how to price your shops and how to make the most of offline time. Each one teaches with Cashmate, a free neon city tycoon you can play in your browser, and every number in them comes from the game's own code.

Play free The full player guide

• City builder tips for beginners

  Ten rules for your first city: roads, homes, shops, markets, happiness, upgrades and land.

• City builder road layout: grids, blocks and frontage

  Grid or parallel streets? Road spacing compared tile by tile, and how to fill a block.

• How to price items in a tycoon game

  Demand, the best price, stock and competition, worked through one real shop.

• Idle games with offline progress: how to use it well

  What keeps running while you are away, the cap, and what to do before a break.

• How to play a city builder in your browser

  No download, no account: what you need, the controls, saving and your first minutes.

Looking for a rule or a number?

The Cashmate player guide is the reference: every building with its cost, output and reach, the controls, land prices, goals and the radio. These guides are the other half: how to put those rules to work.

Coins are an in-game currency and have no cash value.