Cities Skylines 2 is the ultimate exercise in detail. From roads to traffic, city services, and the economy, every aspect of the city-building game sequel has been painstakingly redesigned and balanced. With the Cities Skylines 2 release date almost upon us, there’s a part of me that’s almost afraid – CS2 is so in-depth and detailed, it feels like I’ll actually be running a city. But videogames will be videogames, and even in the case of Cities Skylines 2, happy, glitch-related accidents will still happen. One feature in CS2, related to how you gauge citizen happiness and manage housing, is the result of a bug.
We’ve seen Cities Skylines 2 maps and got the full Cities Skylines 2 system requirements, so you can check your PC is up to the job before release day. Colossal Order and Paradox have also shared extensive details on traffic, housing, the economy, trade, and just about everything that’s been redesigned and overhauled since the original management game. Even Chirper, the in-game social media feed directly inspired by Twitter (now X) has been transformed and serves as a helpful early-warning system for your city’s problems.
In Cities Skylines 2, you can lock onto individual Cims and ‘follow’ them on Chirper. Anything they chirp will now appear on your feed, and might serve as a useful temperature test for those demographics overall. If you focus on a low-educated citizen who is chirping about the lack of job opportunities, potentially there is a general shortage of appropriate work in your city.
Likewise, you can now see how many ‘likes’ your citizens’ chirps receive. More likes means it relates to more people – if someone chirps that they’re sick of power cuts, and that chirp has thousands of likes, you might want to take a look at your electricity grid.
You can even ‘like’ chirps yourself – but this wasn’t originally intended. Though the new-use social network is a fundamental part of how you survey and manage situations in Cities Skylines 2, being able to jump in and drop some likes yourself is a total accident, but Colossal Order has decided to keep it in anyway. “It started as a bug,” game designer Henri Haimakainen says, “but we like it so much.”
Whether liking your citizens’ chirps will have any other effects remains to be seen. Perhaps if you spend too much time on Chirper people will start complaining that you’re not doing enough work. Or maybe if you don’t like any chirps, your citizens will think you’re out of touch, and not interested in what they say. This whole mayor thing is real hard.
Check out all of the Cities Skylines 2 DLC we can expect post-launch, and how the Cities Skylines 2 mods will work post-Steam Workshop. Try some of the other best strategy games, while we wait for Cities Skylines 2. Thinking a little bigger? Try the best grand strategy games on PC instead.