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Games like Stick RPG you can still play in 2026

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The legitimate ways to play Stick RPG in 2026 are Stick RPG 2: Director's Cut on Steam (Windows and macOS), or the original Flash games through Flashpoint, a free web-game preservation launcher. If you want the same loop of jobs, stats and a city to hustle in, with something still being updated, the closest free browser games are Kingdom of Loathing and Torn. BitLife is the phone version, and Big Ambitions and Streets of Rogue are the paid PC picks. I make DimeTown, a free browser roleplay city that borrowed Stick RPG's train, work and spend loop, so it's in the list too, along with its downsides. Every fact below links to its source and was checked on 4 Oct 2026.

What Stick RPG was

Skye Boyes, who founded XGen Studios in Edmonton, published Stick RPG in 2003 as an Adobe Flash browser game. According to Wikipedia, it had a million plays in its first month. XGen's own description, kept in Flashpoint's database, calls it a life sim in the vein of Jones in the Fast Lane. You choose which stats to build, where to work, and whether to obey the law, and a Karma meter keeps score. The Complete edition added a bus depot to other cities, furniture for your apartment, car theft and a run for president.

Stick RPG 2 (2011) drops you into Paper Thin City to build strength, charm or intellect and collect artefacts that explain the place. The Director's Cut came to Steam on 16 Jun 2014. Its store page lists 25 careers, 18 weapons, 3 combat zones, an expanded romance system, two extra mini-games and 30 trophies, and sums up the loop as work, fight, study, eat, drink, gamble, train, sleep, and repeat.

That loop is what people mean by "games like Stick RPG": a small city, a daily budget of time or energy, stats you grind at specific places, jobs that pay more as the stats go up, and the choice to go straight or go crooked.

How to play Stick RPG today

  • Stick RPG 2: Director's Cut on Steam. Windows and macOS, single-player, A$29.50 before discounts on the Australian store. It's a finished game: the last announcement on its Steam news feed is from Oct 2017, about the XGen bundle.
  • Flashpoint. Adobe ended Flash Player support on 31 Dec 2020 and blocked Flash content from 12 Jan 2021, so the original browser versions no longer run in a normal browser. Flashpoint's database lists Stick RPG (XGen Studios, 2003) and Stick RPG 2 (2011). Flashpoint Infinity 14.0.3 (21 Nov 2025) runs on Windows 8.1 or later, macOS and Linux, and downloads each game when you first open it.
  • XGen's own site still lists Stick RPG 2 with a Play button, but that link returned "404 Not Found" when I checked on 4 Oct 2026.

Search results for "Stick RPG online" are full of unofficial re-uploads and "unblocked games" pages. The two routes above are the ones that come from the developer or from a preservation project.

The alternatives at a glance

Game Platform Price model Players Still updated? (sourced) What it shares with Stick RPG
Stick RPG 2: Director's Cut Windows, macOS (Steam) Paid, A$29.50 Single-player Last Steam news Oct 2017 It's the sequel
Kingdom of Loathing Browser Free; optional $10 donation items Online, with chat, clans and opt-in PvP News post 30 Sept 2026 Stick-figure art, a daily adventure budget, silly humour
Torn Browser Free; paid "donator packs" Online, crime MMO 2026 Elimination event: 28,994 players joined Crime, education courses, business, fights
Omerta Browser Free; paid unlock codes Online, mafia MMO Running; version 5.0 since 2015 Crimes for cash and rank, car theft, jailbreaks, casinos
BitLife iOS, Android Free with ads and in-app purchases Single-player iOS 3.25.1 on 21 Sept 2026 A whole life by menu: school, jobs, crime, prison
Big Ambitions Windows, macOS (Steam) Paid, A$36.36 Single-player 1.0 on 28 Aug 2026; hotfix 23 Sept 2026 Start broke in a city, work your way to owning businesses
Streets of Rogue Windows, macOS, Linux (Steam) Paid, A$29.50 Single-player, online co-op and PvP Version 99 update, Jul 2025 Top-down city, many ways through (fight, sneak, hack)
DimeTown (I make it) Browser, desktop and phone Free Up to 50 players in one city Last update 3 Oct 2026 Stat training at stations, street jobs, casino, cops and hustlers

Prices are the Australian Steam store's full prices on 4 Oct 2026 and change with sales and region.

Kingdom of Loathing

The nearest relative in spirit. Asymmetric launched it on 10 Feb 2003, the same year as Stick RPG, with hand-drawn stick-figure art and a fixed number of adventures per day (40 to start) that reset at "rollover". It's free with no ads or subscription; paying $10 gets you a tradeable "Mr. Accessory". It's a real MMO, with chat, clans, a player-run mall and seasonal opt-in PvP. On 4 Oct 2026 the front page showed 207 players logged in and a news post from 30 Sept announcing that month's new item, so it's very much alive. It's a joke-dense fantasy adventure rather than a city life sim: you won't get a job at a burger shop, but the stat grind and daily turn budget will feel familiar.

Torn

A text-based crime MMO that Joe Chedburn launched in 2004. It runs in the browser, is free to play, and sells "donator packs" for in-game benefits. Wikipedia describes a world built on crime and business, with education courses, player-versus-player fights and a 2023 rework of the crime system. It's busy: Torn Stats, a third-party tracker, counts 28,994 players who joined Torn's 2026 Elimination team event. If what you liked about Stick RPG was grinding numbers and deciding how crooked to be, Torn is one of the deepest versions of that still running. It's all menus and text, though, so there's no city to walk around.

Omerta

A 1930s mafia browser MMO, launched 26 Sept 2003 and still running at barafranca.com, where its front page lists the current top families. You climb the ranks by committing crimes, stealing cars, breaking friends out of jail and gambling in mob-run casinos. It's free, with optional premium content bought through an in-game market. The current build, version 5.0, dates from 2015, so expect a steady game rather than new features. It suits players who want the crime ladder from Stick RPG with other people on it.

BitLife

Candywriter's life simulator for iOS and Android. You live one life from birth, choosing school, jobs, relationships and, if you like, crime and prison, all through menus and random events. It's free with ads and in-app purchases. Both stores show updates in Sept 2026 (Google Play 18 Sept, App Store 21 Sept). It's the best fit if you remember Stick RPG mostly for the "what kind of life will I live this time" feeling and want it on your phone. There's no city to explore and no other players.

Big Ambitions

Hovgaard Games' business life sim, set in New York. You start with nothing and build up from small shops to corporations. Version 1.0 came out on 28 Aug 2026 and has had patches since, the latest a hotfix on 23 Sept. It's single-player and paid (A$36.36), on Windows and macOS. This is Stick RPG's "get a job, then own the place" arc made into a full simulation, with far more detail and far less silliness.

Streets of Rogue

Matt Dabrowski's top-down roguelite in randomly generated cities. The Steam page pitches it as part Deus Ex and part GTA: you fight, sneak or hack, and most problems have several solutions. It supports online co-op and PvP. Its last big update, version 99, came in Jul 2025. A sequel, Streets of Rogue 2, is listed on Steam as "coming soon". It isn't a life sim: there are no rent, jobs or days. But it captures the "this city is a toy box" side of Stick RPG better than anything else here.

DimeTown

Disclosure: I make DimeTown, so weigh this one accordingly.

DimeTown is a free top-down roleplay city in the browser at /play/. It runs on desktop, and on phones held sideways. It takes the Stick RPG loop and makes it multiplayer. You start with $120 as a cop, a hustler or a citizen. Muscle, Sleight and Charm each level up to 5, trained at actual places in town: the bench press at Iron Mike's Gym ($2 a session), Rosa's lockpick board at the pawn shop ($3) and open mic at the Velvet Room (free, and your typed jokes are judged). Energy runs down, and a bed at the Palms Motel ($15) fills it up again. Work means tending bar, running deliveries from Dino's or packing containers at Grove Freight. There's blackjack, slot machines and a lottery drawn at 7:00 and 19:00 game time.

The big difference is how you act. You don't pick from a menu. You type what your character says or does, an AI judge (Jev, from TypeSafe) reads it in context, and two six-sided dice plus visible modifiers decide how it lands. How DimeTown works shows that step by step.

The trade-offs, honestly:

  • It's new and the player base is small. One city holds up to 50 people, and at quiet times you may find mostly the computer-run locals.
  • Adults only (18+). You agree to that, and to the community rules, before your first game.
  • Browser only for now. The iOS and Android apps aren't in the stores yet.
  • The AI reads what you type. The rules card says so up front: Jev (TypeSafe) and OpenAI process your text to play the locals.
  • Death is permanent. At zero health you're down for 20 seconds. If nobody helps you up, that character is gone. See laws and permadeath.

If you want a long single-player run to optimise, Stick RPG 2 or Big Ambitions will suit you better. If you want the Stick RPG city with other people in it, and you'd rather type "slip the bouncer a twenty" than click a button, DimeTown is built for that. For the same idea from the GTA multiplayer side, see SA-MP roleplay without owning GTA.

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