The comparison
Mafia games, and the one played on a real map
Nearly everyone searching this wants a crime empire they can build from the sofa. That is a good genre with excellent games in it, and we are not one of them — so that goes first.
If you want the empire
Mafia City is the big one — a real-time crime empire with alliances, a huge world and constant events. Mob Wars: LCN is the long-running text-based one — stats, missions and player-versus-player rather than a map. Underworld Empire and The Grand Mafia sit between the two. All four share a premise: start as a nobody, build a syndicate, crush rivals. All four were live and shipping updates when this page was last checked.
What they share is not one mechanic — an RTS empire and a text RPG play nothing alike — but one property: everything happens on the screen. You can play any of them on a train, in bed, anywhere. If that is what you came for, install one and skip the rest of this page.
If the map should be a real map
Every game above uses the word turf, and in every one of them it is an abstraction — a region on a fantasy map, a slot in a menu. Nobody has ever walked to it.
One game got there long before we did, and leaving it out would make this page useless. Turf Wars has been on the App Store since 2009 and was still shipping updates in May 2026. In its own words it is where you "claim and defend your favorite real-world places from other mobsters" — your neighbourhood, your bar, your workplace — with turf you capture from other players, upgrade, and charge protection on. If you want a GPS mafia game, it is the obvious first thing to try, and it has the reviews to show for it.
What differs is the shape of what you hold. Turf Wars is an RPG about rank and force — missions, weapons, cops, working your way up from street punk. In BloodRivals a turf is one building at one real address that behaves like property: you take it by standing there, build it up, and it earns while you hold it. Someone else can walk to it and take it back. Your team's territory is wherever your team actually goes.
The cost of that is real and worth stating plainly: your territory cannot grow while you sit still. There is building here — addresses have levels, and the larger upgrades take time — but none of it starts until you have physically been somewhere. It is a smaller game that asks more of you, and the wrong choice if the appeal of the genre was playing from the sofa.
The honest comparison
Swipe the table sideways to see BloodRivals →
| Empire games | BloodRivals | |
|---|---|---|
| Where you play | Anywhere — sofa, train, bed | Outside, at the address |
| "Turf" is | A region on a game map | A building on your street |
| Territory grows by | Upgrading and waiting | Walking to more of it |
| What you build on | A base on a game map | A building you walked to |
| Your team is | An online alliance | People near you |
| Scale | Mafia City: 100M+ installs | Small, mostly Norway |
The board, right now
That last row is the one to judge us on, so here it is as a number. The board currently has 123 registered players holding 23,664 properties. (as published 2026-09-13 — the app shows the live count)
Free on iOS and Android. No ads. Optional in-app purchases.
Common questions
- Is BloodRivals like Mafia City or Mob Wars?
- Only in theme, and they are not all alike either — Mafia City is a real-time strategy empire, Mob Wars: LCN is a text-based RPG. What they share is that everything happens on the screen: the map, if there is one, is a menu. BloodRivals also has buildings you upgrade through levels, and the bigger upgrades take real time to complete — that part is not the difference. The difference is that the building is at a real address and you had to walk there.
- Is there a GPS mafia game other than BloodRivals?
- Yes — Turf Wars, and it got there first. It has been on the App Store since 2009 and was still shipping updates in May 2026. Its own listing describes claiming and defending real-world places from other mobsters, capturing turf from other players and charging protection on it. It is an RPG about rank and force, where BloodRivals treats a claimed building as property that earns while you hold it, but if what you want is a mafia game played on the real map, try both.
- Can you play it from the sofa?
- Not really, and that is the honest dealbreaker. Claiming an address needs you within GPS range of it. You can manage what you already hold from anywhere, and attacks on garrisoned houses can be launched remotely, but the growth of your territory requires going outside. If that sounds like a chore rather than the point, the empire games are the better fit.
- What does "turf" actually mean here?
- A specific building at a specific address, taken from the real map. Not an abstract region, not a tile on a fantasy grid. Your turf is a place you can walk to, and so is everyone else's.
- Is there a team?
- Yes — teams hold territory together and appear on the leaderboard as a unit. The difference from an alliance in an empire game is that a team's territory is geographic, so who is near you matters as much as who is online.
- How big is it?
- Small, and concentrated in Norway. Mafia City alone counts installs in the hundreds of millions; we do not, and the live number is on this page so you can judge it before installing rather than after.
Read next
- Location-based gamesThe genre, and what is still active in it
- Property gamesBoard, idle and location — three kinds that play nothing alike
- Territory gamesHow claiming and holding real ground works
- GPS gamesBattery, rural coverage and how much walking is really needed
- Pokémon GO alternativesFor catching-game players wanting stakes
- Ingress alternativesTerritory without the coordination overhead
- Turf alternativesGPS capture without the monthly reset
- Atlas Earth alternativesVirtual land other people can take
- Landlord GO alternativesProperty games you have to walk to
- Orna alternativesGPS games with real-world stakes
- Geocaching alternativesWhen you want the ground to be at stake
- GPS running gamesTerritory capture without a pace requirement
- Walking gamesA reason to go out — without a step counter
- Games that shut downMinecraft Earth, Wizards Unite and more — and what's left
Pokémon GO, Ingress, Niantic, Scopely, Turf, Andrimon, Atlas Earth, Landlord GO, Get Rent, Reality Games, Monopoly GO!, Monster Hunter Now, Pikmin Bloom, Jurassic World Alive, Orna, Northern Forge, Geocaching, Adventure Lab®, Groundspeak, Munzee, RunStrict, Claim of Zones, Capture, KYRO, Movements Lab, Territory Run, Minecraft Earth, Mojang, Microsoft, Catan, Nerd Ninjas, Ghostbusters, Sony Pictures, FourThirtyThree, The Walking Dead, AMC, Next Games, Draconius GO, Harry Potter, Wizards Unite, WB Games, The Witcher, Spokko, CD Projekt, Maguss, Parallel Kingdom, Run An Empire, Location Games Limited, Father.io, Proxy42, Mafia City, YottaGames, Mob Wars: LCN, Underworld Empire, The Grand Mafia, Turf Wars and MeanFreePath are trademarks of their respective owners. Named across this site only to compare them; no affiliation or endorsement is implied, and nothing on this site is a statement about their earnings, payouts or business practices.