171

I went in skeptical, the way you are with every early-access game that gets called the 'Brazilian GTA' by the algorithm. What I found in 171 is something rarer than a polished product: a handcrafted place. The fictional city of Sumariti, modeled on real neighborhoods in São Paulo state, has a texture that most Western open-world games spend hundreds of millions failing to fake. Propane trucks trundle past playing little jingles. NPCs cycle through daily routines dressed in recognizably Brazilian clothes. Region-specific radio stations cycle through pop, funk, and rap, and the soundscape alone communicates more cultural specificity than the entire runtime of most crime sandboxes. This is a world built by people who grew up in it, and that shows in every cracked sidewalk. The core loop puts you in the shoes of Nicolau Souza, a young man from a low-income neighborhood getting tangled in crime. On foot or behind the wheel, you roam a city that reacts to aggression, escalate, and police and local gang members both take notice, echoing the wanted-level design the genre popularized. Driving already feels surprisingly solid for an alpha build, with vehicle customization letting you lower cars, swap out wheels, and tune audio systems. Weapon modification happens through a roaming white van you can flag down on the map, where you can attach suppressors, extended magazines, and laser sights. Gang territory conflict adds another layer that fans of the San Andreas era will recognize and miss. The mission variety is thin right now, delivery runs and police patrol work make up the bulk of early content, but the sandbox itself holds enough texture to wander in. Here is where honesty matters. 171 is still very much an alpha, and some players report that the experience right now feels unfinished in ways that go beyond typical early-access roughness: stuttering in dense areas, physics oddities, sparse mission structure, and optimization that can punish mid-range hardware. The most critical voices say content depth has not kept pace with the years of development. The most charitable note that over twenty post-launch updates have already added vehicles, clothing, weapon mods, and seasonal content, and that the developer has moved the project to Unreal Engine 5, with a full 1.0 window expected in 2026. Both readings are fair. What you are buying right now is a foundation and a promise, not a finished product. For a certain kind of player, that is exactly the right ask. If you care about cultural specificity in game worlds, the kind of ambient detail that makes a city feel like it has a history, 171 offers something I have genuinely not seen from an indie team at this scale. The Brazilian Portuguese voice acting, the neighborhood variance from humble back alleys to middle-class streets to pockets of vegetation, the radio dial that sounds like it was pulled from a real São Paulo FM scan: these are not small things. They are the reason a game like this earns patience. Just go in knowing the gap between the atmosphere and the current gameplay depth is wide, and that you are funding the journey toward closing it.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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