What should be the role of law enforcement in your community? What type of police officers should walk your street? What should be their priorities?

In Keep the Peace, YOU are the Chief of Police, responsible for the safety and security of your town, campus, city, or region. You'll make difficult decisions about the type of police force you want to create, and the way you'll approach crime, natural disasters, tensions in the community, and other issues in your jurisdiction. You'll decide which officers to hire, how to train and equip them, how and where they should spend their time, and how they should tackle a nearly infinite variety of delicate and dangerous situations. And every decision you make could have dire consequences.

Keep the Peace is an exciting fusion of grand strategy, "tycoon" management, city builder, and real-time tactics. For more than 15 years, Keep the Peace has been the passion project of an independent designer. But to become the high-quality game that you deserve to play, we need your help. Through this Kickstarter, we hope you'll get involved in the development and testing of Keep the Peace - sharing your hopes, ideas, and feedback -- while funding an expert team of developers and designers who will realize the vision of Keep the Peace. 

When you first boot up Keep the Peace, you'll choose a town, campus, city, or region to start your new career. Every map is an open-ended sandbox where you'll control all aspects of your police department. But every map also has its own unique circumstances and challenges, and you'll have to adapt your strategies accordingly. 

Depending on the scenario, you'll either be taking over an existing department, or starting a new one from scratch. In either case, your first order of business is to ensure you have the right officers for the job. Select candidates based on dozens of skills and characteristics, like leadership, conflict resolution, marksmanship, explosives handling, driving, and forensics. 

Deliberative Entertainment has launched a Keep the Peace kickstarter campaign, looking for $331,404.

Assign your officers to units. Will you put junior officers with senior ones to gain experience faster? Or will every officer be a lone wolf? Choose from a wide array of vehicles, and customize everything from the paint job to the lights. Then give your officers the tools and weapons they need to get the job done, whether that means riot shields or speed radars or infrared. 

Set up patrol areas around your city and distribute your units wherever they're needed the most. Prioritize their time between preventing crime, reacting to crime, and traffic enforcement.  

Respond to dangerous and dramatic emergencies. Break-ins, bank robberies, shootings, high-speed pursuits, bomb scares, search & rescue, natural disasters… along with more common issues like domestic disturbances, noise complaints, and car accidents. And much more. Every incident type will have virtually infinite variations, so no two will ever feel exactly the same, and the circumstances of an incident could change in an instant, so you better be ready for anything. 

You decide how to approach each challenge. Will you negotiate with a hostage taker, or break down the door? Will you block a growing group of protesters, or let them march unimpeded? Will you send in overwhelming force, or a single undercover officer? Will you set up a roadblock to stop a pursuit, or back off and try to catch them later? Every situation is different, and every approach has its pros and cons based on your resources, your objectives, your opposition, the terrain, the weather, and many other factors. 

The outcome of every incident and every investigation matters, as do the tactics you choose to achieve those outcomes. Catch a major criminal and crime rates may fall, which will change the type of incidents that occur in your city. Community safety and satisfaction will increase, making people more likely to cooperate with your officers. But… your tactics can also backfire. Ruthlessness and excessive force will erode community trust, and could lead to complaints, inquiries, and expensive lawsuits regarding the conduct of your officers. 

Your officers gain experience from everything they do, allowing them to improve their skills, gain new abilities, and get promoted. But your officers are also at risk of injuries, stress, and low morale. Keep them healthy, happy and well trained, and they'll be ready for any challenge you send their way. 

Experiment with various strategies. Balance your efforts between preventing crime, responding to crime, investigating crime, and otherwise serving the public. Target crime hotspots with detailed data about past crimes, and launch stings and crackdowns in high-crime areas. Set policies, training priorities, and rules of engagement to create whatever style of police force you desire. 

Key Features:

• Endless variation. There’s no such thing as a “routine” emergency. Every incident, every investigation, is unique and will require a thoughtful approach. Every situation presents you with different objectives, terrain, layouts, resources at your disposal, weather, visibility, etc.. Even incidents of the same type always play out differently. So make the best plan possible with the information you have, but be prepared for it all to go sideways. Surprises are around every corner.
• Multiple environments. Rural towns with long stretches of highway. Large metropolises with densely packed high-rises. Busy university campuses. Keep the Peace will challenge you to adapt your strategies to a wide variety of map types and environments.
• Intuitive UI. Keep the Peace will feature a smart, intuitive user interface that makes it easy to deliver complex orders to your units. Focus on perfecting your strategy, not struggling with the controls.  
• Intelligent AI. Assuming you hired smart ones, your officers can take care of themselves. There's no need to micromanage their every move. They’ll react on their own to danger, or to someone or something threatening their mission objectives. Just tell them what you want achieved, and they’ll find a way to get it done.
• Open-ended gameplay combined with procedurally-generated story arcs. The jurisdiction is yours to command however you choose, but things are always happening. A serial killer could terrorize your city for months or years. A new gang could come to town. Your allies in City Hall could retire, leaving a mayor intent on making your life difficult.
• Meaningful consequences. An innocent bystander is caught in the crossfire between gang members and police. One of your best officers is hurt in a car accident while pursuing a fleeing suspect. The mayor is disappointed with your performance and thinks you're wasting money. These aren't just random one-off events, they are outcomes that can have long-term consequences on your community, your department, and your resources.