On Xbox, fans have been treated to a wonderful collection of first-party games this year, starting with the rhythm action game Hi-Fi Rush, the cutting-edge racing game Forza Motorsport, and the massive interstellar RPG Starfield. And to see so many games recognized by today’s nominations from our third-party partners, like Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, and Sea of Stars, make this an incredible time to be a player!
On behalf of all the creative teams across Xbox, from Bethesda Softworks to our newest members at Activision Blizzard, congratulations to this year’s nominees.
When we started to develop Cities: Skylines II — available today for Windows and with PC Game Pass — one of our goals at Colossal Order was to keep the tools easy to use and intuitive so that you can focus on the vision of your dream city and unleash your creativity.
But starting something new, like a new city in a city-builder game, can feel like a daunting task at first. What to do with all the unused terrain? Where should I start? Should I build the roads first or simply start plopping some buildings on the ground? Fear not, for I am here to tell you that building cities is easy, fun, and exciting!
Breaking Ground: An Empty Canvas
As your city grows, the game will introduce new options and opportunities to you in nice, bite-sized portions. Take your time, familiarize, and experiment with these newly introduced features before moving on to the next milestone of your city.
One of these are the government subsidies, a brand-new feature in Cities: Skylines II. This is a dynamic safety net that will react to your city’s development. When you are setting up the basic infrastructure of the city, and the city isn’t yet big enough to support itself through taxes and service fees, the government subsidies will carry some of the financial weight, alleviating that early city stress and allowing you to concentrate on the more pressing matters: setting up services and providing new citizens homes and workplaces.
Roads: The Bones and Arteries of Your City
Road building is a large part of city building; they are the bones. But they are also the arteries of the city, guiding citizens to their homes, workplaces, leisure destinations, truck traffic to manufacturing companies and industrial areas, and public transportation vehicles to their stops and stations.
The new road tools with multiple tool modes offer you much more flexibility to create not only beautiful road networks but also road networks that serve their function well. The road tools combined with the new and much-improved traffic AI create a dynamic, ever-changing city that keeps you on your toes as you respond to the evolving city and its transportation needs.
Zones – Engines of expansion
Once you have built some roads, you can start adding residential areas, commercial centers, and workplaces in the form of industrial manufacturing companies and offices. These zones work in synergy: residential zones provide citizens with homes; industrial zones create jobs and manufacture goods that are sold in commercial zones, giving citizens shopping opportunities; office zones manufacture immaterial goods and services such as banking and media which are also consumed by citizens.
Inspecting the Demand indicator tells you what types of zones the city needs. In a nutshell, if there are open jobs, more housing is needed to attract new workers. If unemployment is high, more workplaces are in demand. As manufacturing companies create goods, they need places to ship them, so the demand for commercial buildings increases. There are more variables affecting the demand for different zones and you’ll find more about them by looking closely at the Demand panel.
Service in the City – Placing it right
Services are an important aspect of any city. They provide the basic infrastructure such as water and electricity networks and garbage management, and offer healthcare, security, and education to improve the quality of life and Happiness of the citizens and allow businesses to prosper. As you start building your city, the services unlock at a leisurely pace, always providing your city with options to answer emerging needs.
Always remember to keep an eye on the electricity usage and production in your city as well as the availability of fresh water and sewage capacity. These are basic building blocks without which other services and businesses cannot work. Missing these will also negatively affect your citizens’ lives.
Educating citizens teaches them to become more conscious consumers and allows them to apply for more advanced jobs. They consume less electricity and water in their daily lives and produce less garbage. When workplaces get filled with adequately educated and happy workers, the companies’ efficiency goes up which increases their profit. This shows up in the increased tax income.
A sense of safety is an important aspect of citizen Happiness. Having functioning healthcare, adequate police presence and fire engines on stand-by are the building blocks to achieve this.
A well-planned transportation network brings citizens together, alleviates traffic congestion, and improves the coordination of manufacturing companies.
City services also provide your city with several types of leisure destinations. For outdoor activities, there are parks, plazas, and various sports fields. For indoor activities, you can offer the citizens tourist attractions and landmarks. Certain commercial companies such as restaurants, bars, and shopping opportunities also provide leisure in the form of entertainment when you zone commercial areas. Additionally, Tourism plays a role in the game and much like the citizens of your city, tourists flock to the leisure offerings if they are available.
You can always check the citizen Happiness meter as it shows all the things that affect the Happiness value of the entire city. For more in-depth information per household, you can select any residential building and inspect each household there to see what affects that particular group of people.
Citizens – The living and breathing city
In Cities: Skylines II we wanted to bring more attention to the citizens and their lives. Each of them has a home, and a place to work or study (although they can become unemployed or homeless). They have an education level that determines their work-life possibilities and their consumer habits when it comes to the usage of certain city services. Each citizen age group also has its own preferences about consuming goods, both material and immaterial.
When you plan, for example, your city services, you should keep in mind what each citizen group requires the most. Families with children want to live close to elementary schools as they gain a well-being bonus from proximity to these schools. Senior citizens on the other hand do not much care about education facilities in their neighborhood; they gain no benefits from them. Both adults and seniors appreciate leisure opportunities, be they parks or the option to go on a shopping spree, as an example.
Age groups also determine their traveling preferences. Teens value money. If they can save money by traveling by bus or leaving the car further away from their destination because there is free parking, they will do that. Adults care about time; the faster they get where they want to go, the better – how much it costs is secondary to their decisions. Seniors prefer comfort; what is the easiest, smoothest way to get to their destination is all that matters to them.
Milestones – Your city, your choice!
In Cities: Skylines II we took a different approach to the way progression works. Milestones are still the main steps towards the shining metropolis. However, milestones are now unlocked by earning XP instead of being population-based and they only unlock the main categories of the numerous services in your city. The rest of the buildings you unlock by using Development Points that are gained by unlocking milestones. What you want to unlock using the points is entirely up to you to decide!
With the new game progression system we want to give you the opportunity to mold the city to your liking, unlocking the features that are important to you and enhance your city the most. With the new system you also now have the option to build small. You can keep your city as a small, well-crafted village or small town and still progress through the milestones taking advantage of the passive XP you gain from things such as citizen Happiness. You can go big and magnificent, aim for small and cozy, or anything in between, and still achieve everything you set out to do!
We at Colossal Order are truly excited to see what you come up with in Cities: Skylines IIand we hope you check it out today on Windows or with PC Game Pass. Unleash your creativity and let your city-building visions come true!
Cities: Skylines II – PC Edition
Paradox Interactive
☆☆☆☆☆
★★★★★
PC Game Pass
If you can dream it, you can build it.
Raise a city from the ground up and transform it into the thriving metropolis only you can imagine. You’ve never experienced building on this scale. With deep simulation and a living economy, Cities: Skylines II delivers world-building without limits. Lay the foundations for your city to begin. Create the roads, infrastructure, and systems that make life possible day to day. It’s up to you – all of it. How your city grows is your call too, but plan strategically. Every decision has an impact. Can you energize local industries while also using trade to boost the economy? What will make residential districts flourish without killing the buzz downtown? How will you meet the needs and desires of citizens while balancing the city’s budget? Your city never rests. Like any living, breathing world, it changes over time. Some changes will be slow and gradual, while others will be sudden and unexpected. So while seasons turn and night follows day, be ready to act when life doesn’t go to plan. The most realistic and detailed city builder ever, Cities: Skylines II pushes your creativity and problem-solving to another level. With beautifully rendered high-resolution graphics, it also inspires you to build the city of your dreams.
Welcome to Next Week on Xbox! In this weekly feature we cover all the games coming soon to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows, and Game Pass! Get more details on these upcoming games below and click their profiles for further info (release dates subject to change). Let’s jump in!
Available on day one with PC Game Pass! Raise a city from the ground up and transform it into a thriving metropolis in the long-awaited sequel to the smash-hit city-building game. With deep simulation, a living economy, and more realistic features than ever before, Cities: Skylines II offers world-building without limits.
The origin of stealth action returns. Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 unifies the beginning of the Metal Gear gameplay experience in one single package. The Volume 1 line-up features the original versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid (which also includes VR Missions/Special Missions), and the HD Collection versions of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
Get ready to serve, dink, and smash your way to victory in the thrilling world of Pickleball Smash! Experience the thrill of pickleball like never before! Hone your skills in single-player mode or challenge your friends in multi-player fun where every match is a test of skill, strategy, and agility.
Master the art of brewing with over 30 coffee recipes. Start with a basic setup, upgrade your café, manage your staff, and build your very own coffee haven. Are you ready for the ultimate coffee journey?
Children have been missing for a long time in Lakewitch, and you are destined to solve this creepy mystery. Who is the kidnapper, and why is he doing it? Where are the children disappearing to, and how to save them? You can solve all the puzzles and find out the answers…if you don’t get scared!
Regular Factory is an escape room that will test your skills. Solve puzzles, decode secret codes, find hidden objects, and investigate the different areas of the secret factory where you work while you discover the dark truth. Will you be able to escape?
Spooky and her mansion of creepy cuties are back in Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion: HD Renovation! Can you survive 1000 rooms of adorable terror? Or will you break once the cute facade dissolves, and you find yourself running for your life from the unspeakable, hideous creatures that dwell and write in the bowels of this house?
Unlock the secrets hidden within the haunted town of Aspen Falls, featuring gruesome enemy encounters, epic bosses, cunning puzzles, and a deep story where not everyone is who they seem.
Take control of a fearless heroine equipped with a teleportation gun. Your mission is to overcome a series of challenges in a 2D world filled with brainteasing puzzles while you explore 35 meticulously designed levels, full of treacherous spikes and cunning traps, using your gun to hit teleportation boxes and instantly swap positions with them.
In The Inheritance of Crimson Manor you will experience a “Penny Dreadful” like gothic horror story set in a beautiful and enigmatic Victorian era manor with a dark secret. Explore a beautiful Victorian Mansion filled with fine art, secret passages, and mysterious mechanical contraptions. Solve clever riddles and fascinating mechanical puzzles crafted to ensure that only the right person could unveil the mansion’s secret.
Blood will run in the highly anticipated hardcore FPP slasher set one year after the events of Ghostrunner. Adventure through a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk future that takes place after the fall of the Keymaster, a tyrant who ruled over Dharma Tower, the last refuge of mankind. Jack is back to take on the violent AI cult that has assembled outside Dharma Tower and shape the future of humanity.
Join the best and bravest railroad builder on an incredible journey to search for precious minerals and save the beloved Hamster Village. Travel through four intriguing worlds, such as a forest, a desert, and even the medieval era, in a total of 64 challenging stages.
Mineko’s Night Market is a game that celebrates Japanese culture while introducing a heartwarming story about friendship, tradition, and many, many cats. Play as Mineko, a curious girl who has just arrived at her new home on a struggling Japanese-inspired island at the base of Mount Fugu. Discover the secrets behind the town and restore the struggling village to its former glory. All the while, manage your daily activities, complete various jobs, venture on whimsical quests, and craft peculiar items in preparation for the weekly Night Market!
A survival horror game focused on combat, stealth, exploration, puzzle solving, and uncovering a gruesome mystery. Can you face the unpredictable, deadly, and cruel foe and find the truth before he finds you?
It’s the latest and most delightful installment in the beloved Paintball series. Embark on an exciting saga in the candy factory as you help Boldy fix the broken machinery. Utilize your quick thinking and clever matching skills to match 3 or more candies near a pipe, just like in the original Match 3 puzzle game.
You are on a quest to find and defeat the Slime King. With limited movement, you need to think carefully about every step until you reach the door. Push boxes, find keys, beware of traps, and slay every slime that gets in your way!
Experience a heroic struggle and make tough choices. You are the commander of the scarce Finnish troops. Your only goal – to save your homeland and your people from total annihilation in this tactical strategy game rooted in history.
A string of ritualistic murders threatens Bright Falls, a small-town community surrounded by Pacific Northwest wilderness. Saga Anderson, an accomplished FBI agent with a reputation for solving impossible cases arrives to investigate the murders. Anderson’s case spirals into a nightmare when she discovers pages of a horror story that starts to come true around her.
In Car Detailing Simulator, you get a chance to renew any car and restore its splendor at the request of demanding customers! A nice and well-groomed vehicle can be the pride of every human being! Clean, polish and marvel at your creations in this highly realistic game where every little detail counts!
In this graphic point-and-click adventure, you get to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a friend through the eyes of 4 different characters, each with their own characteristics. Uncover the mystery as you’re led toward a dark path filled with Lovecraftian myths and creatures.
UFC 5 is as real as it gets. Powered by Frostbite, your favorite fighters now have unparalleled character likenesses to complement next-level environment fidelity that’ll make their walk to the Octagon feel like a PPV main event. The all-new authentic damage system brings the intensity and strategy of a fight to life, as cuts and strikes absorbed can affect mobility, defense, stamina, and more. Receive 3-day early access with the Deluxe Edition, plus EA Play and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members get a 10-hour trial.
An arcade space shooter on rails that follows the adventure of a team of elite pilots during what at first seems like a routine virtual reality training session. In this mind-blowing journey through retro wave aesthetic environments and synthesizer music, you will face the simulations (or not) of the units and minions of the evil Skal Empire.
Enjoy Halloween Pinball, enter with your friends in the old cemetery and look out for ghouls and ghosts. Discover all the secrets, find the path of the souls, or break the curse of the witch, complete all the missions, and become number one in the world or the best among your friends, posting your high score on the online leaderboard.
Try to survive hordes of classic horror monsters! Hero Survival is a roguelite in which you will slay hordes of enemies from classic horror movies by enhancing your character, learning different skills, and matching your play style with equipment.
Join Detective Guy and his trusty sidekick Cleo, the clue-sniffing dog, as they investigate the mysterious death of a fabulously wealthy game designer in rural Vermont, USA. As you explore the castle grounds, search for clues and interview suspects, can you solve the case and bring the guilty party to justice?
The Myth Seekers: The Legacy of Vulkan (Xbox Version)
A hidden object puzzle adventure game from the creators of Enigmatis and Grim Legends. As the 1920’s draws to a close, political tensions run high in Italy. When a member of the top-secret Myth Seekers agency goes missing, you’re called in to discover the truth. Can you recover the Hammer of Vulcan before havoc is unleashed by the ancient gods?
Take fate into your own hands with Terminator: Resistance – Complete Edition! This bundle is an enhanced version of Terminator: Resistance, the officially licensed first-person shooter set in the Terminator universe, the Annihilation Line Narrative Expansion starring Kyle Reese, and Infiltrator Mode, where players get the chance to take control of the iconic T-800 series Infiltrator unit.
If you’re looking to build a city, build a team, or build a to-play-next list of games, we have updates for you. Some games you’ll remember from seeing at gamescom or at our Xbox Games Showcase, and we have a few new announcements – excited to get to the game play!
Available Today
Like A Dragon: Ishin! (Cloud, Console, and PC) Take up the sword as Sakamoto Ryoma and venture to Kyoto to find your father’s killer, clear yourself of a framed murder, and restore your honor. In doing so, you will bring an end to the samurai era and forever change the future of Japan. Draw your blade and join the revolution in this heated historical adventure.
Coming Soon
F1 Manager 2023 (Cloud, Console, and PC) – October 19 Drive every decision in F1 Manager 2023. Manage every aspect of your chosen F1 team from your HQ to the garage and from the pitlane to the podium. Challenge for motorsport’s highest accolade, making the split-second decisions that can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Your legacy begins here.
Cities: Skylines II (PC) – October 24 Available on day one with PC Game Pass: Raise a city from the ground up and transform it into a thriving metropolis in the long-awaited sequel to the smash-hit city-building game. With deep simulation, a living economy, and more realistic features than ever before, Cities: Skylines II offers world-building without limits.
Dead Space (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) EA Play – October 26 Just in time for Halloween: Game Pass Ultimate and EA Play members can confront the nightmare onboard the USG Ishimura and unravel its dark secrets in the sci-fi survival horror classic Dead Space.
Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery (Cloud and Console) – October 26 Available now on PC and coming to Game Pass on Xbox consoles! Play as The Detective in three silly mysteries! Finding clues and questioning suspects is just part of the job for such an experienced frog. Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery is a collection of all three Frog Detective cases.
Mineko’s Night Market (Cloud, Console, and PC) – October 26 Welcome to Mount Fugu, a cozy Japanese inspired village with a great mystery to unfold. Join Mineko in her new hometown, where she’ll make new friends, collect and craft whimsical items, revitalize the once thriving Night Market, and uncover the truth of the great sun cat, Nikko.
Headbangers: Rhythm Royale (Cloud, Console, and PC) – October 31 Available on day one with Game Pass: Have you ever looked at a Pigeon and thought, “what is going on in your head?” Well, think no more! Headbangers puts you and 29 others into the eye of the Pigeon while you battle it out in rhythmic challenges to find out who is the ultimate Master Headbanger. Compete against each other in mind-bending musical minigames, screw over your competitors with powerups, and collect Crumbs to customize your very own Pigeon!
Jusant (Cloud, Console, and PC) – October 31 Available on day one with Game Pass: Embark on a climbing adventure in Jusant! Master your climbing tools as you ascend a mysterious, ever-changing tower. Enjoy an atmospheric soundtrack and breathtaking biomes, accompanied by the enigmatic Ballast. Your watery companion will guide you while awakening nature along your path to reveal the tower’s mysteries and reach the top.
DLC / Game Updates
EA Sports UFC 5: EA Play Early Access Trial – October 24 EA Sports UFC 5 is as real as it gets – and you can experience the next evolution of the fight game starting October 24 with the EA Play early access trial. With EA Play, you can save 10% on the full game with your member discount if you decide to buy.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Perks
75-days of Crunchyroll Mega Fan – Available until October 20 Grab 75-days free of Crunchyroll Mega Fan! Crunchyroll Mega Fan grants members access to stream the world’s largest anime library (with over 1,300 titles) ad-free, anywhere you want, with access to new episodes simulcast the same day following premiere in Japan.
Smite – Season of Celebration Pack – Available now Jump in today to check out the New Map, Odyssey: Immortal Revelry, Tier 5 Medusa, Celestial Syndicate Battle Pass, and more.
Leaving October 31
The following games are leaving soon, but there’s still time for a proper farewell. Remember to use your membership discount to save 20% off your purchase before they go to keep them in your library!
Gunfire Reborn (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Kill It With Fire (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Persona 5 Royal (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Signalis (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Solasta Crown of the Magister (Cloud, Console, and PC)
I guess all that’s left now is to go play some games while we wait for these games. We’ll be back with more updates but be sure to follow us on social at Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass in the meantime!
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