Paradox Interactive has announced its next-generation city builder, Cities: Skylines II. The original Cities: Skylines is probably my second-favorite city builder ever, behind SimCity 2000. There’s a lot the game got right, but there was definitely many ways it could have been improved. I stopped playing it after reviewing the “After Dark” DLC, especially since it seemed like the game was getting inundated with an absurd amount of DLC.
Revealed during the Paradox Announcement Show 2023, Cities: Skylines II hopes to push the city-building genre even further, promising to let players build the cities of their dreams “with the most open-ended city-building sandbox on the planet.” Hopefully this time around, with a lot less annoying fake “tweets.”
Cities: Skylines II will be heading to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S along with Xbox Game Pass sometime this year. If you’re the type to try to figure out what content is in store for the game based on its list of achievements, Cities: Skylines II’s achievement list has already made an appearance.
“Cities: Skylines reset the bar for city building games when it launched eight years ago, and we are incredibly proud of its impact. We built a thriving community around Cities and introduced many to city building for the first time,” said Mariina Hallikainen, CEO of Colossal Order. “Now, we’ve brought the years of experience we’ve gained to take a new step forward in the city builder genre, again, for our community and new players”.
I found the announcement trailer to be a bit overly dramatic for a city builder game, and I’m more excited to see actual gameplay. But this is all we get for now!
