Cities Skylines abandoned buildings have always been a source of frustration. If you accidentally neglect a neighborhood for a short while, or make a mess of the infrastructure, you wind up with a bunch of unoccupied properties that drag down environmental quality and tank everyone’s happiness. Cities Skyline 2 houses, however, appear to work differently. With the city-building game sequel and Cities Skylines 2 release date almost upon us, Colossal Order and Paradox are seemingly building on the new roundabout, road, and traffic systems, to solve our biggest housing issue ever. Cities Skylines 2 is starting to look seriously promising.
Cities Skylines 2 has a dedicated roundabout tool, so we no longer have to lay them out manually segment by segment. We’ve also seen how roads can now easily be built through other roads, how highway on and off ramps are made more intuitive (phew), and how perfectly parallel city blocks can be created with just one click.
But with Cities Skylines 2 houses, it seems Paradox and Colossal Order may have had another terrific idea. As spotted in the latest dev log, which gave us a glimpse at Cities Skylines 2 gameplay, and a lot of the new systems in action, there appears to be a little house with a ‘for sale’ sign posted up outside.
You can see this thanks to a colorfully named Reddit user ‘RealToiletPaper’ (seriously, Reddit, never change) who shares a zoomed-in image from the latest footage. We’ve circled the ‘for sale’ sign:
So, perhaps now, instead of buildings simply becoming abandoned, and instantly dropping local environment quality and happiness, if they’re neglected, they will go up for sale. This means we won’t have to spend time bulldozing empty lots and waiting for them to be rebuilt – instead, they will simply pass into new hands, while we work to fix the surrounding infrastructure.
Alternatively, this could indicate a whole-new feature, whereby you more closely control rents and housing prices. Perhaps in the early stages of building your Cities Skylines 2 metropolis, you present the majority of commercial and residential properties for rent, in order to attract more Cims.
Once the population is established, you can sell the buildings to their current occupants, or – if you’re a bit evil – push the prices and flip the houses to more affluent citizens. Either way, hopefully the old days of abandoned buildings piling up everywhere are over.
Before launch day, make sure your gaming rig is ready with the full Cities Skylines 2 system requirements. You might also want to check out some of the other best management games on PC.