Cities: Skylines 2's new developer breaks cover on its plans for the sequel's future, revealing a patch that will include changes players 'have been requesting for a long time'

A decade after it famously beat SimCity at its own game, Finnish developer Colossal Order waved goodbye to the Cities: Skylines series last year. In Colossal Order's place, stewardship of Cities: Skylines 2 was taken over by Surviving the Aftermath developer Iceflake Studios. Now at the helm, Iceflake has unveiled the first part of its plans to take the sequel forward.

In the first issue of a new developer diary called City Corner, Iceflake outlines some of the features arriving in its debut Skylines 2 update. "There are quite a few changes coming in this first patch, some of which you have been requesting for a long time," the developer explains. The post focusses primarily on visual changes Iceflake is working on, though these do not represent the full extent of the update.

Even so, the announced adjustments to Skylines 2's are substantial. The headline change is a new feature that allows players to customise the colours of individual objects, inspired by yenyang's 'Recolor' mod. "So far, we are limiting this asset colouring to buildings, props and vehicles for now," Iceflake writes. "But we are working on making this possible for trees, plants and other props as well."

Arguably more significant, however, is an extensive rework to Skylines 2's UI, intended to make interacting with the sequel less confusing. "We have streamlined the onboarding process and changed some icons to be more expressive and easier to understand the context from them." The focus of these changes is to the toolbar, which Iceflake says has "gone through a big makeover" to improve clarity and readability.

Other planned changes include a major lighting and skybox pass designed to improve night-time visibility and increase the number of clouds you're likely to see, plus an overhaul of Skylines 2's weather effects that ensures snow actually sticks to the ground. "Since most of the surfaces didn't show any signs of snow even in the thickest snowstorm, we decided to fix it in true Finnish fashion," Iceflake says.

As mentioned, this isn't everything coming in Iceflake's first Skylines 2 patch. The studio plans a second dev diary that will dive into the mechanical changes coming with the update. "We have also prepared fixes to some of the issues you have mentioned in our forums, which we will touch upon in the next post," Iceflake adds.

It still isn't wholly clear why Colossal Order parted ways with both Skylines and publisher Paradox Interactive. In a statement announcing the split, Paradox said the pair had "mutually decided to pursue independent paths", while Colossal Order's CEO explained the developer planned to pursue "new projects".

But it isn't the first time a developer has shuffled off the stage of its own game under the publisher's banner, with the original developers of Bloodlines 2 and Prison Architect 2 both receiving the shepherd's crook treatment. Perhaps Paradox likewise felt that Colossal Order was no longer the best studio for the job, although it may also be that CO felt disillusioned by the response to the sequel.

Iceflake is in a slightly different position from the replacement developers of those games, however, taking care of a game that's already out. While it's too early to say how well the studio will handle caretaking duties, this initial post does show some promise.

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