Colossal Order today delivered another entry of its Cities: Skylines 2 developer update series, and this one focused on the maps players will have at their fingertips to build their metropolises. At a glance, the buildable areas may seem smaller over the original due to the tile size reduction, but the area available for unlocking has actually expanded, both outward and upward, by quite a margin.
"In Cities: Skylines the playable area consists of 5x5 tiles, 9 of which can be purchased once everything is unlocked," explains Colossal Order. "One map tile is 1.92 x 1.92 km which results in the total playable area being 92.16km² with a maximum of 33.18km² to build a city on."
In the sequel though, almost every tile in any given map can be purchased, totaling to 441 tiles to build on. So even though each tile is about 1/3 the size of the previous game, the new playable area amounts to 159km², or about five times larger than Cities: Skylines. The studio has upped the height limit for the sequel too, letting city builders expand their creations onto the mountains.
As the screenshot above shows off, in the opening phase the game will offer details on the map's climate, hemisphere (for seasons), buildable area, and built-in connections to the outside, along with some options to tweak like cheats and building themes.
Cities: Skylines 2 will ship with Archipelago Haven, Barrier Island, Great Highlands, Lakeland, Mountain Village, River Delta, Sweeping Plains, Twin Mountain, Waterway Pass, and Windy Fjords maps. Pre-order customers will receive Tampere as an extra map, while San Francisco is incoming as a post-launch release via the game's Expansion Pass.
"When creating the maps for Cities: Skylines II we had a goal of providing you with a diverse set with various amounts of interesting scenery," the studio added. "Being able to unlock such a huge area also lets us create more varied terrains as you can fully utilize all of the available resources and Outside Connections on the map."
Read the full developer deep dive about maps over here, which also includes teaser images of each of the available regions. The next update will cover the highly-anticipated title's Climate and Seasons systems.
Cities: Skylines 2 is slated to launch on October 24, 2023 on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 . It is also coming to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass subscription services.
