In IGS, we are fully aware of how essential AI companions (bots) are to the overall game experience.

Some squad games address this issue simply placing the responsibility either entirely on the player or on cooperation with multiple human players in co-op mode. Consequently, bots are, on the one hand, immortal (to prevent their death from frustrating players), but on the other hand, their ability to assist is very limited.

In Crime Boss, we have multiplayer co-op heists, but we let players play them offline with bots. You can choose what bots and how many of them.

Experienced players can play our roguelite single-player campaign. This mode is a bit complex as you need to manage the whole team, including their equipment and survival. This is an essential part of the roguelite mode economic loop. Taking bots or not is affecting the difficulty—a full team of capable heisters/bots can defend themselves well, even in situations where a lone player would struggle to survive. This serves as a clear motivation to save limited funds for hiring and equipping them.

By design, the loss of a heister during a mission can have a significant impact on the entire campaign. This reinforces the roguelite aspect of the game and increases gameplay tension (in a good way). For this reason, we chose a more challenging approach—making bots vulnerable and mortal while simultaneously enhancing their ability to assist, creating an alternative to human companions.

As a result, we occasionally receive negative reviews from players regarding AI quality. Yes, we hear you. And you are right. We understand that losing them due to AI imperfections can be frustrating for players. We could improve the bots by simply dumbing them down and making them invulnerable. "Those who do nothing make no mistakes." But this wouldn’t be helpful for the game, given the above context. So instead, we take this feedback seriously and are tirelessly working on improving the artificial intelligence of both friendly and enemy characters.

Creating “smart” companions is a challenging task for several reasons, often involving conflicting requirements. Let’s take a glimpse under the hood, to understand how the AI of the AI bots and enemies is done in Crime Boss.


Spatial awareness, which comes naturally to humans, is a significant challenge for AI programmers. The fundamental requirement is a well-defined space that bots can navigate, avoid dangerous areas, and perform special actions (such as climbing or unlocking) to progress. This involves processing vast amounts of data to find the optimal path, which is computationally intensive, especially as the target distance increases. Now imagine that not only are multiple bots performing these calculations, but also numerous enemies, all in real-time. Additionally, paths may need recalculating due to in-game events (e.g., an exploding car blocking the way).


To protect themselves effectively, bots must locate cover that shields them from all known enemies. With potentially dozens of cover options, the AI must evaluate and select the best one based on specific criteria. However, this is complicated by the dynamic nature of enemies—positions constantly change as enemies die or new one’s spawn from various directions.


Bots must balance multiple tasks: staying near the player, finding effective cover (which may be far away), collecting loot, engaging in combat, reviving teammates, and more. AI code must carefully evaluate and prioritize these tasks to ensure the overall behavior feels intelligent and helpful.


Complex missions with intricate graphics also present pathfinding and cover-definition  challenges. Issues may arise, such as bots failing to find paths or missing cover where it should exist. Such bugs can originate in the mission itself, the game code, or even the game engine. These errors are often dynamic and difficult to reproduce, making them tricky to resolve. Additionally, it can be challenging to distinguish whether an issue lies in a subsystem bug or overall, AI logic shortcomings.


AI tasks “compete” with other game processes for CPU resources, impacting fps and overall game smoothness. Achieving intelligent AI behavior requires significant computational power, yet it’s crucial to minimize performance impact. Balancing these demands is inherently contradictory, underscoring the complexity of the task.


In this update, we focused specifically on improving bot behavior, particularly their ability to survive in dangerous firefights.


To enhance bot survivability, we introduced new behaviors and integrated them into the existing AI model:
• If a bot has sufficient health, it behaves as before—engaging enemies, looting, or transporting loot to designated areas.
• If a bot’s health drops below a certain threshold, it retreats to safe cover while continuing to fight during the retreat. Often, they either defeat the enemy or regenerate health during the move, then return to their original behavior.
• For critical cases, we defined “critical health” at approximately 30% of total health. For characters with low base health, this threshold is a fixed value to ensure timely activation of retreat behavior. At critical health, survival becomes the absolute priority. Bots sprint to cover and kneel to reduce their chances of being hit. They only return to normal behavior once fully regenerated. In our original design, bots prioritized combat—inflicting damage over self-preservation. Strict proximity limits to the player and other factors also hindered their ability to find effective cover when injured.

In the new update, we grant bots greater movement freedom and prioritize finding high-quality cover. Once fully healed, bots attempt to return to the player if they are too far away. If a cover is compromised (i.e., the bot takes additional damage), it is invalidated, and the bot immediately seeks new cover.


When searching for cover, we implemented a scoring system where each cover option is evaluated, and the highest-scoring cover is chosen. Scoring criteria include:
• The number of enemies blocking the path to the cover (ideally zero).
• How well the cover protects against known enemies' fire.
• The distance from the nearest enemy (the greater, the better).
• The distance the bot must travel to reach the cover (shorter is better).

Each parameter has a specific weight, carefully balanced for optimal results. To ensure the best outcomes, bots will now know the positions of all living enemies purely for cover selection. Enemies are dynamic—new one’s spawn immediately as others die—so this prevents bots from being sent to unsafe locations, which players would find frustrating. In all other systems (e.g., target selection), bots rely only on information gathered during gameplay.


Overall, the game after Update 14 should have much smarter and efficient bots. Is the work on AI perfect and finished? No. We will keep testing and writing down problems. We will also listen to your feedback. Based on this, we will continue to improve specific problems and behaviors. We are also planning to investigate how bots behave in stealth. Right now, it’s safer to let them wait and act as a backup if alarm is triggered. But we would like to improve the follow mode in stealth, so bots can be more useful. We will see how it goes and keep you informed about future changes and fixes.

Thank you for reading and we look forward to your input. We are sure that this update will make for some engaging and dynamic combat experiences. Good luck and have fun!

Tomáš Stepanek
Principal Gameplay Designer

Hello Bosses!

We at InGame Studios are very pleased to announce the official launch of our Crime Boss partner program! Since the latter half of last year, our studio has been fortunate to work alongside some amazing creators who have been immeasurably helpful to the growth of Crime Boss: Rockay City. Now, we aim to open these partnerships to other content creators so we can continue to grow the game as well as the channels of those who would like to be members of the Crime Boss family.

If you’re a fan of Crime Boss: Rockay City, the heisting genre of games, FPS games, or are just looking to grow your channel, take a look below and see if this partner program is a good fit for you!

Our goal is to make this program accessible to as many people as possible, even up-and-coming channels. Creators with a smaller following are encouraged to reach out to us!

Our partners can expect early access to content, inside information about game status and planned content, regular and direct communication with the development team, and exclusive merchandise.

To help grow your channel, we’d be happy to provide game keys for giveaways, amplify your social media presence, and collaborate with you on Crime Boss-related content.

A positive and professional mindset and a respectful representation of Crime Boss: Rockay City and InGame Studios. We encourage criticism, even from our partners, if it is honest and constructive.

Showcase the game, play it, and most importantly—have fun!

A partner must be at least 18 years old to ensure compliance with legal and content guidelines.

Nope! This partner program will remain in place for the foreseeable future. If you see this blog six months from now or later, feel free to throw your hat in the ring!

No, you can create Crime Boss content in your native language. Being proficient in written English is ideal for communication with the devs, but that’s why we have translation tools now.

You can produce Crime Boss content on the platform of your choosing—or all of them!

We don’t offer monetary incentives to partners. The goal of the program is to grow your channel and the game.

As long as you create Crime Boss-related content, we won’t micromanage your posting frequency. That being said, if no Crime Boss content is created after becoming a partner, the partnership may be revoked.

It’s never too late to start! If you like the game and want to be involved, that’s enough for us to potentially include you in the program.

We aim to make this program as accessible as possible. However, those who have never created content before will not be considered.

All applicants will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. If you have a very small following but are a huge fan of Crime Boss: Rockay City, or if you have a sizable following but have never played before, we will review your channel with this in mind.

Yes! Just specify in the submission that you are applying on behalf of someone else. In this case, we ask that whoever you recommend be familiar with Crime Boss or an active member of the heisting genre of games.

If we agree they are a good fit, we will reach out to them directly to see if they are interested.

Currently, we are also looking for additional beta testers. Right now, we only have a handful of testers, but they are very talented, incredibly knowledgeable about the game, and deeply involved in the community.

If you are regularly active in the community, whether through Steam Forums, Discord, or another medium—or have experience beta testing, you may be a great addition!

Fill out this form, and we’ll review it to let you know whether we’d like to make you a partner.

CB Partner Program – Sign Up [505.games]

And that just about covers it!

If you have any questions regarding the partner program or beta testing, please message CB-ModMail in the official Discord, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.