blackMARKET is a run-based criminal empire incremental. The centre of your operation behaves like a black hole — product, cash, and influence appear at the periphery and get pulled inward. Your job is to widen the mouth.
THE CORE LOOP
Each session is an operation: a distribution window, a street-sales period, a laundering cycle. You manage throughput and suppress heat before the clock runs out. When the window closes, you reinvest. The next run starts with a larger, more capable network.
Everything curves inward. Late-game looks like a cartel logistics network collapsing into a single invisible owner.
THE EMPIRE MAP
The upgrade tree is a criminal-enterprise diagram, branching by operational family:
Counterfeit — forged packaging, shelf mimicry, retail camouflage
Narcotics — clandestine synthesis, potency, survivability under pressure
Territory — crews, safehouses, local footholds, district control
Distribution — runners, wholesale cells, ports, route density
Laundering — fronts, shell accounts, wash cycles, clean turnover
Corruption — civic favours, judicial delay, inspector management
Heat — burn protocols, ghost routes, evasion discipline
It's fog-of-war. You see what you've bought, what's immediately unlockable, and one edge beyond. You don't know what you're building until you're already building it.
HEAT
Heat accumulates during operations — faster at full capacity, slower when cautious — and carries between sessions at a decaying rate.
Low heat: the network runs. Medium heat: options compress. High heat: the operation shifts to damage control — launder capital, burn routes, go quiet. Let it run long enough and you lose territory.
Every automation upgrade permanently raises your base exposure. There is no way to scale and stay invisible. The tradeoff does not resolve.
THE NETWORK
The upgrade tree covers narcotics formulation, territory control, laundering operations, institutional corruption, and enforcement evasion. The copy for each reads like an operations memo. The UI tracks throughput, heat levels, and network efficiency. This is the language the empire uses internally. It has no other language.
STATUS: NETWORK EXPANSION ACTIVE
CONFIDENCE: MANAGED