Given that EA squandered the Simcity series with the latest title, Paradox are picking up the slack with Cities: Skylines. And they’ve just announced a sequel that will be coming out sometime in 2023.
The city builder genre has been around since the early 90s. The first game was SimCity, created by Will Wright, the lead creator for Maxis. SimCity became an instant hit and was subsequently ported to multiple platforms. This set the groundwork for other titles in the series and countless copycats that tried to emulate their success. That is until the latest SimCity game was a colossal failure, giving Cities: Skylines an in.
Paradox did a great job taking the crown away from Maxis with Cities: Skylines. The game brought back all the complexity that fans demanded. It has an amazing modding community that added tons of content to the game, alongside countless expansion packs from the developers.
And now, after years of speculation and fans demanding a sequel, Paradox has finally announced Cities: Skylines 2. While we know little about gameplay features, we got a shiny cinematic trailer. The developers at Colossal Order have promised that cities will “react” to your choices, which means you’ll need to plan ahead if you want to succeed. One can only hope that they’ll also bring some improvements to the public transportation systems.
There is no release date yet, but Paradox has promised a 2023 launch. Cities: Skylines 2 will come out for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. It will also be available on Xbox Game Pass day one.
