Cities: Skylines

Cities: Skylines is a city-building simulation franchise developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive, launched March 10, 2015, as the game that effectively ended the EA SimCity series’ dominance of the genre. The original game sold over fifteen million copies, built one of the most active modding communities in the simulation genre, and became the default recommendation for anyone seeking a modern city builder after SimCity 2013’s disastrous always-online launch cleared the field. Cities: Skylines II released October 24, 2023, to a mixed reception significantly complicated by technical performance issues at launch, though subsequent updates improved the experience.

Cities: Skylines (2015)

Colossal Order, a Finnish studio based in Tampere, had previously developed the Cities in Motion series of public transit management simulators before Paradox Interactive commissioned a full city-building game. Cities: Skylines launched March 10, 2015, for PC, filling a market gap that had existed since SimCity 2013’s troubled release two years earlier. The game offered large map tiles, deep traffic simulation, a water and sewage system, extensive zoning and district tools, and a Steam Workshop integration that allowed the modding community to add buildings, roads, assets, and complete gameplay overhauls. Within a week of launch the Steam Workshop contained thousands of player-made assets. The game sold over fifteen million copies across its lifetime and received fourteen expansion packs covering topics including mass transit, natural disasters, airports, and financial systems.

Console versions of Cities: Skylines released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch across 2017 and 2018, developed by Tantalus Media with adapted controls and a curated selection of pre-approved console-compatible mods. The console versions received positive reception despite limitations relative to the PC version’s modding depth.

Cities: Skylines II (2023)

Cities: Skylines II released October 24, 2023, for Windows, developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive. The sequel rebuilt the simulation from the ground up with more detailed traffic AI, a deeper economic simulation, improved terrain tools, and significantly larger maps than the original. The launch was marked by serious performance issues on most hardware configurations, with the game running poorly even on high-end systems due to optimization problems that Colossal Order acknowledged publicly and committed to addressing through patches. The console release of Cities: Skylines II was delayed indefinitely following the PC launch’s technical reception. The Beach Properties DLC released in April 2024 alongside the Economy 2.0 update, which revised the economic simulation the game had launched with. Subsequent updates improved performance and addressed the most significant technical complaints from launch.