It makes a lot sense I can not imagine it did not occur years in the past: as revealed at Gamescom final week, Lego is lastly fulfilling its future by making a city builder. And I am glad to say I obtained my keen fingers on an early construct of Lego Skylines for somewhat preview.
I do need to make this clear: the preview construct I performed was very quick, with solely about 35 minutes of playtime. It was virtually fully centered on constructing one small neighborhood, with the inhabitants maxing out at round 50 residents by the tip of the preview. That is not fairly lengthy sufficient, or large enough, to get an actual really feel for a metropolis builder.
However what’s right here is instantly interesting. The little Lego world I labored on was merely pretty. Click on to construct a home and it will shortly be constructed in a colourful bathe of Lego bricks falling from the sky and piling up right into a cozy-looking little dwelling. Bulldoze a mistake and the constructing will collapse right into a heap of plastic bricks on the bottom. The lovable animations and cheery visuals are precisely what I would hoped for once I noticed the sport’s trailer final week, and once more made me marvel why Lego did not make a metropolis builder years in the past.
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As in builders like Cities: Skylines (Paradox Interactive is publishing this one, too), you drag roads out throughout the bottom and join buildings to them: homes, retailers, farms, and factories. One factor I observed, on this construct at the very least, is that the map is nearly fully a flat aircraft, with only some areas I may see the place the elevation modified a bit. I did not see any terrain manipulation instruments within the construct, both, which is somewhat disappointing.
Lots of the main focus is on customizing every of the buildings you place. You possibly can enhance a house owner’s happiness by adorning their yard with gadgets like mailboxes, barbeques, flowers, wheelbarrows, fountains, and all types of little prebuilt odds and ends. However every family additionally has a particular style, known as Taste.
Choosing decorations from the Flavor categories listed, like “cozy” or “nature,” will increase the household’s happiness. Flavor is optional—it’s a city builder, after all, and not everyone wants to obsess over the micro-details—but if you want to make every single citizen in your city overjoyed with their home, you’ve got the tools to do it.
Completing quests for your residents is another big part of the early game. As you’re planning and building, you might see an icon over someone’s head indicating they have a request. Maybe they want you to build them a home in a more secluded area, or they’d like a park built in their neighborhood.
Fulfilling quests unlocks new types of buildings, like leisure, letting you build sports arenas, theaters, and other places your residents can visit. A couple other quests popped up that were just for fun, like searching the city to find several chickens that had escaped from a farm, and clicking on them to return them home.
I also got to tinker with, very lightly, the resource chains in Lego Skylines. I built a couple of farms that generate raw goods, which are then shipped to factories to make products, which are then sold in shops. There wasn’t much to it, logistically: just having the farm, factory, and stores placed seemed like enough to get the supply chain up and running, and soon little trucks were making deliveries and pickups without my input. But I was pretty pleased that my bread factory resembled a giant toaster, complete with two enormous slices of toast sticking out of the roof. Pretty much everything in Lego Skylines is completely cute.
I didn’t get much further before the preview ended, but it was a cozy and wholesome half-hour of play without much that could really go wrong. As for building and managing a larger city, I can’t say what kind of challenge that’ll be. The build I played did include a saved game of a larger city spread out across several islands connected by bridges, but even that urban sprawl still only had about 2,400 residents: not exactly a metropolis.
I didn’t see anything resembling traffic jams to deal with: you don’t even have to worry about parking lots because whenever a resident gets out of their car it just disassembles in a puff of bricks—so I think traffic and other deep management challenges might not really be a part of the game.
I didn’t see any evidence of disasters like tidal waves or tornadoes, either, though a fire did break out in one building. I quickly deleted all the fire stations to see if the blaze would devour the whole city, but only the single building burnt down. Maybe it’s not really Lego’s thing to simulate catastrophic situations that result in mass Lego-person fatalities. I bet those would still be cute, though.
I hope I get the chance to play more soon. It’s a lovely game to look at and if you like focusing on little details in your builders, like decorating individual houses and fussing over the themes of neighborhoods, it looks like there’ll be a lot here to keep you occupied. For people more into a deep city building challenge, I’m guessing this isn’t the city builder for you, but we’ll find out when we get to play some more.
Hi, I’m Rishab. I’m a passionate pc gamer and an avid video game content writer. I have been involved with video games for over 2 decades now, and even today, after playing an astronomical number of games over the years, I’m still eager for more. In my free time, you will find me enjoying a hot cup of coffee and playing my favorite relaxing fishing game, Dave the Diver.
