Something to look forward to: Developer Colossal Order has announced the long-awaited sequel to its popular city-building simulator. In Cities: Skylines II, players have the opportunity to design and build the city of their dreams. The two-minute-and-change announcement trailer shows mostly non-gameplay visuals with narration that makes it look more like a god simulator, but perhaps Colossal Order is simply looking to promote the many elements that the players will be responsible for managing.
In fact, a description on the game’s landing page says that Skylines II will challenge your decision-making skills with deep simulation and a vibrant economy. The sequel also promises a fully realized transportation system, more construction options and advanced modding capabilities.
The first Cities: Skylines landed in 2015 for PC and helped plug a hole left by EA’s disastrous reboot of SimCity a few years ago. The sim was a hit with gamers, earning a score of 85 on Metacritic and a user score of 8.7 out of 10.
Colossal Order was followed by a bevy of expansion packs and DLC that collectively restored the base game, transforming it into something almost unrecognizable from the original (in a good way ), and brings the game to additional platforms. Last spring, Colossal Order sold more than 12 million copies of the game across all platforms. Last year alone, the game welcomed more than 5.5 million new players.
Last month, publisher Paradox Interactive announced a remastered version of Cities: Skylines for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. The revamped game dropped on February 15, delivering several upgrades optimized for current generation consoles including more buildable tiles to create larger cities, improved graphical performance, a new environmental control panel to adjust the weather and time of day and a new quick selection tool. .
Cities: Skylines II is due out later this year for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Game Pass and PC via Steam. Pricing has not been revealed but you can add the game to your Steam wishlist.