Jack Boyd, the 60-year-old police commissioner for the city of Freeburg, is being forcibly retired by corrupt Mayor Rogers after Francis Kendrick, Boyd's deputy, was accused of corruption charges that in spite of being dropped have irreparably damaged their reputation.
The endgame features an assault on their political ally's rival and involves strategical placement of units. The game also features crime investigation gameplay, where the player must piece together what happened leading up to a crime and capture the criminal. Sending out squads of officers with differing political opinions degrades unit cohesion, causing more failures unless groups of officers with similar morals and values are sent to the scene of the crime. The political views of the player's officers are unknown unless they make one of them a rat, which increases the likelihood of mistrust and the death of the officer while docking some of said player's pay in order to recompense that officer for his information. Later on during the game, the department's officers will start taking sides between the two main political figures, Mayor Rogers and Robespierre. Failure to stop crimes results in the player's squad and pay being reduced. The player must strategize about how many officers they send to each crime, because if there are no spare officers, some crimes cannot be stopped. As the game progresses, the player is able to send SWAT Teams and reinforcements. Depending on the severity of the calls, the number of police sent varies. The player receives calls and they are tasked to prioritize certain ones while dealing with staffing. The mafia may ask the player to turn a blind eye towards some of the crimes and be rewarded with money, or if they wish to stay alive. The player is tasked to make $500,000 in his final six months on the force, through various ways which the player chooses one of the options include utilizing the local mafia. The gameplay is presented via imagery and text on an isometric map. This Is the Police is a real-time management video game where the player controls protagonist Jack Boyd, a police chief in the game's location of Freeburg set to retire in one hundred and eighty days. The isometric map of Freeburg, which helps the player solve crimes
A spinoff, Rebel Cops was released on mobile and PC in August, 2020.
Ī mobile version of the series is made by HandyGames with the same gameplay in 2019, with the sequel in March 2020. The game was followed up by a sequel - This Is the Police 2 - for the same platforms in 2018.
The game takes place in the fictional city of "Freeburg" in 1985, during Boyd's final one hundred and eighty days on the force. In the game, the player controls the protagonist Jack Boyd, who is being forced into early retirement by the corrupt mayor. It was first released on Augfor Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux, and was later released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 22, 2017, and for Nintendo Switch on October 24, 2017. This Is the Police is an adventure strategy video game by Belarusian developer Weappy Studio and published by Nordic Games and EuroVideo Medien.