Cities Skylines 2's new developer is already cooking up big changes, but you'll be able to choose which ones you want

New Cities Skylines 2 developer Iceflake Studios is almost ready to unleash its first big patch since taking charge of the troubled sequel. After failing to match up to the standard set by its beloved predecessor, the city-building game was taken out of the hands of original creator Colossal Order in November, as it parted ways with publisher Paradox Interactive. Now, CS2’s new handler details some of the biggest changes we can expect in the next Cities Skylines 2 update, which is planned to launch sometime next week. It includes the likes of a UI overhaul, improved terraforming tools, custom city colors, and a reduction in suspicious early morning ‘deathwaves’.

Perhaps the most important note from Iceflake is that it’s implementing ‘legacy toggles’ for many of the more significant changes it’s making to Cities Skylines 2. These will let you decide whether you like Iceflake’s new implementation, or would rather revert things to the way they were under CO. The biggest example is with the user interface, which has been overhauled to a more streamlined design that’s intended to be “clearer to understand.” But if you’re already familiar with the old look, and decide you’d prefer to stick to that, you can.

I love to tinker with the layout of the land, so changes to terraforming are very welcome. The update will now save your settings for each individual tool separately, and will not transfer them to others as you switch between them. Iceflake has also adjusted the strength of tools “to better reflect the percentage” and will now let you drop brush size all the way down to one (rather than capping it at ten) for more fine tuning. Once you start laying things out on that new ground, you’ll be able to make use of custom colors for buildings, props, and vehicles, inspired by the popular Recolor mod created by ‘yenyang’.

Iceflake spotted an issue causing deaths among the population to be largely clumped up between midnight and 6am, leading to instances of “massive deathwaves across your city.” It’s adjusted this accordingly to create a more even distribution. It also notes that, in easy mode, citizens “were breaking records in lifespan and almost refusing to die of old age”, and has also corrected for this. Sorry to the digital super-centenarians out there, but everyone’s time comes eventually.

The introduction of bikes has been more of a flood than a trickle, so Iceflake has pulled this back by 80%. It’s also “investigating traffic on a more general scale, like pathfinding cars changing lanes at the last second, and making unnecessary U-turns” – although these later adjustments are still in the works and will require some more time before they’re ready to go.

Elsewhere, Iceflake has overhauled lighting during both daytime and nighttime, and has adjusted the weather and climate of various maps for a more “distinct look and feel based on their location”. Inspired by the studio’s Finnish heritage, it’s also made it so that snow will actually settle onto most surfaces, something that was curiously absent from the game until now. The plan is for this to be expanded to include roads and cars in the future down the line.

You can expect a number of visual bug fixes, too, including improvements to shadow quality and a reduction in screen flickering at dawn and dusk. As for when we can expect all of this, Iceflake says it is hoping to release its first Cities Skylines 2 patch “next week”. After a stretch of uncertainty for CS2, it feels as though the train is finally ready to start rolling out of the station again.

As for what’s next, Iceflake says it intends to keep upgrading its new-look UI with requested features like transparency and additional color options. More improvements for environmental textures are in the works, and the developer also mentions that it’s looking into the continued performance issues, trains getting stuck at city borders, and visual ghosting when using DLSS. It concludes, “We want to thank you for reporting any issues to the forums, since it helps us to make the game better.”