- Citystate Metropolis - Q1 2026 - 24 September 2025
I’m very excited to announce that the Steam page for Citystate Metropolis is now up! Curved roads, procedural buildings, grid-less zoning and true traffic simulation are on the menu. Check out the trailer! The rest of this post is a deeper dive into the game's development and the decisions I made along the way. If you're not interested in the technical side, feel free to go straight to the store page! This has been a long and difficult road. Unlike most other types of games you can’t really have a good trailer or screenshots until most of the game is done. It’s not like I can design one level, get a basic character controller, use some pre-made assets, and get it running. The core tech had to be built from scratch. The road construction tool (spline-based), the zoning tool (also spline-based), traffic and pathfinding, the hundreds of home-made assets; everything has to be in an advanced…
- Patch 1.4.3b - 3 December 2022
Quick patch, primarily to fix the population freezing at 1. When hitting 150k population most systems would stop to work. It was impossible to unlock the new school building. Fixed zoning cubes turning red even when construction is possible in the area. Disabled UI button selection with WASD. Improved visibility of the pollution heatmap. Doubled the maximum limit of pollution possible on a given tile. Pollution propagation distance decreased by 20%.
- Update 1.4.3 - Large school, Large hospital, New skyscrapers - 2 December 2022
NEW Added a large hospital with a capacity of 800. (2.5x the default stage 2 hospital). Unlocks with 200,000 city population and 95 health score. Added a large elementary school with a capacity of 5,400. (3x the stage 4 school). Unlocks with 150,000 city population. Added stage 6 retail buildings. Require 1,800 points of retail demand to develop. Pre-update retail buildings must be manually rezoned (destruction not necessary) to force the new max stage to be set. CHANGES & BUG FIXES Roads were not connecting automatically with existing adjacent tiles. Redesigned ground/underground rail connector. Rails should now visually connect properly. Enhance zoning tool accessibility. In some cases tooltips were not staying on screen for more than a few seconds and so could not be read. Improved shadows at far distances. Increased visible amount of cars, trains and pedestrians. The speed at which…
- Patch 1.4.2b - 17 October 2022
Bug fixes Very large cities were running at low FPS. Fixed an issue with the pathfinding methods of service and emergency vehicles and decreased their spawning rate. Floating building: When a public housing was abandoned (happens if the low class demand is negative) the building position was not being saved correctly and could be seen floating in the center of the map. This does not fix the buildings that were already floating before the update, for that you need to manually bulldoze the area they were occupying. Day time mode is now saved. Some tutorial steps had no text Improved cities name readability in the Nation view Stadium and Pool could not be unlocked if most of the middle class was living in arcologies Increased max zoom out distance, decreased fog density. Various changes to the textures of windows. Improved reflections. Solar farms were lighting up like windows at night. Wh…
- Update 1.4.2 - Waste Management & German Localization - 13 October 2022
NEW Added Waste Management. Garbage disposal facilities become required above 7,500 population. 3 options: A landfill (cheap but very low capacity), an incinerator (heavy pollution, high capacity) and an eco-incinerator (low pollution, expensive, very high capacity) which unlocks with 50,000 jobs in advanced manufacturing. When waste treatment capacity is exceeded, trash will start to pile up on public roads which will decrease the land value and the environment score. Added school bus, garbage truck and police car. All special vehicles can now be seen roaming the city and are parked in front of their respective buildings. Added German localization (Provided by Greetings Rony). CHANGES AND FIXES We can now build multiple service buildings (schools, solar farms, …) at once without having to reselect the tool The amount of underground resource is now displayed when building a mine even wi…
- Patch 1.4.1b - 20 August 2022
A quick summer patch fixing up what you guys have reported in the last weeks. Fixed several issues affecting highway access roads. Highway were being destroyed when surrounding roads were changed. It was not possible to build a highway access if the road was built before the highway. Blur effect was not turned off after closing the load/save nation menu. Improved the computation of the inequality index, especially in cases where the upper class is bigger than the middle class. The game was in some cases freezing in huge cities that have too few intersections. AI pathfinding has troubles finding a path to its destination when the road network has too many bottlenecks. The lot will now get abandoned (after 5 attempts) instead of freezing the game. Residential buildings now try to reach up to 5 different workplaces before triggering a "Can't reach workplace" warning. Retail buildings were…
- Update 1.4.1 - Leisure buildings, Wind turbine, Bug fixes - 9 July 2022
NEW Added a public pool Added a wind turbine Added beach props Added a tennis court Added a holodeck building Added a slider to manually set the exact time of day. Added arrows above functional road connections. MAIN FIXES AND CHANGES Commutes are updated more often and look for closer workplaces in large cities to reduce the chances of "Can't Reach Workplace" abandonment. => When working on large maps especially, avoid long stretched building blocks with few intersections, check if avenue and rail tracks intersections appear correctly and do not put jobs excessively far from houses. Improved pathfinding. Commuters will choose the road with the highest capacity first, if same capacity commuters will choose the road with the least congestion. Increased land value propagation around mixed use buildings (has an effect on their own value and security score too). Increased effect of security…
- Patch 1.4.0b - 25 June 2022
A quick patch fixing a list of bugs (for once there were not so many of them and nothing major) and a short note to talk about the future of the game. Fixes and Changes Mixed use zones had a reduced security rating Slums had a hard time finding a spot to spawn. Cleaned up debug texts in old census tool The new census tool was not displaying the correct icons for mixed use buildings. A stage 2 mixed use building was offset. Reduced airport immigration capacity (-25%). Reduced base immigration flow (-15%). The airport capacity was inaccurately retrieved to compute the bonus on immigration. Fixed a rare missing road tile Fixed a clipping issue affecting bridges and the new cliffs. Corrected and added various prop and car positions on lots. (does not apply to anything built before this patch) Reduced car engine volume. Removed gear change FX. The mayor's car was turning left slightly in a s…
- Update 1.4.0 - Mixed-use zoning, driving mode and unique buildings - 23 June 2022
NEW Mixed Use Zones We can now build mixed use lots. Work similarly to the classic RCI zones and have 4 stages. Developers can build 2 types: a mix of retail jobs and middle income housing or a mix of office jobs and high income housing. Since they require two types of demand, mixed use buildings are a bit more difficult to grow. They also require higher land value than other buildings. Mixed use buildings generate 50% less traffic. They can only be zoned once you have at least 3500 middle class citizens. Added 26 mixed use buildings (heights range from 16m to 200m). Each building can spawn in 2 color variation. Added a car driving mode "Grand State Auto". Vehicles, buildings and roads have collision boxes. The player's car can be damaged. Comes with 2 camera positions (press "C"). The mayor's car can be driven as soon as you build your first road. Added a Stadium (16x16, bigger than th…
- Patch 1.3d - 2 June 2022
Fixed the infinite city loading screen: If you were switching from a standard size map to a large map Nation the cities were created using the wrong terrain data. Or, if at the moment of opening the city the highlighted city in the Nation view changed In most cases the cities could not be loaded back. If you try to open these cities with the new patch the city will not load. CHANGES Zoning 3x wide lots only: Push Alt to enable when zoning. Water and power small bottom arrows are now colored yellow or red when approaching insufficient production. Changed the usage of ports. Instead of the sum of exports and imports, only the difference between exports and imports is now taken into account. Increased the exports from advanced manufacturing by 16%. The UI in Nation view now displays the current number of jobs actually shared with neighbors instead of the number of jobs that "can" be shared…
- Patch 1.3c - 27 May 2022
NEW Added new warning signs when schools and hospitals are close to 100% capacity usage. Added a dropdown list of all service buildings in the service editor panel. Click any item to switch and edit another building. Shows current and max stage for each item. Improved roads intersections to handle more uncommon cases and disabled more of the road construction limitations. Added lot size on each lot type when zoning. Camera's last location in city is now saved BUG FIXES Improved performance in big cities. Was able to merge traffic lights with the roads to reduce draw calls (CPU). Colors of lights will disappear in existing cities. If you had arcologies the park score was wrong. The zoning cost in the UI was often incorrect. Port could not be placed if it was facing a certain side of the map "Ship would not be able to leave the city..." When reloading the city traffic lights were often sh…
- Patch 1.3.0b - 24 May 2022
Fixed an error that was preventing all industrial buildings from reaching stage 4. You need to rezone over your existing buildings for the change to be applied. The maximum lot stage in the census tool was erroneous for all stage 1 buildings and non residential vacant lots. Rezoning was also screwing up this value. Music in city view was not playing. The camera could not move freely along one side of the map. Increased starting Nation balance for all difficulties. Offshore platform was displaying the no road access icon. Offshore platform was not displayed with the construction tool. Is now shown above water. Prospecting tool displays the little squares above water instead of hiding them below. This fix also applies to the bulldozing and terraforming tools. The resource layer was not displayed correctly above water. Disabled waves. Zoning using the Ctrl and Shift alternatives gives more…
- Update 1.3.0 - Larger maps, new lot sizes, new buildings, UI addons - 21 May 2022
NEW Added the option for larger city maps (512x512). Has to be set when creating a new Nation. Nation creator menu and map previews have been updated and the grid on top of the map preview shows the cities' border according to the chosen map size. Added smaller and bigger lot types. 10 new lot sizes have been added to the existing 2 sizes, lot sizes now range from 2x4 to 6x6. This allows more variety and more 'organic' cityscapes. The zoning tool have been redone to accommodate these additions, is now more precise and reliable, allowing to create one lot at a time of any size if needed. Press Shift while zoning to have narrow lots and Ctrl for wider lots! 20 new buildings have been added (17 residential and 3 commercial) to fit with the new narrower lot types. 2x wide lots can only accommodate buildings up to stage 4 for residential, stage 2 for retail and stage 1 for all other sectors.…
- Patch 1.2.0d - 28 April 2022
Balancing Balanced out the exchange rate slightly, making it a bit harder to 'cheat the inflation'. (suggested by Omnius) Decreased the effect of the exchange rate on the trade balance. Changed the cost of buying and selling dollars and doubled the maximum reserves limit to 1.95M. Increased default religiousness level by 0.2pt. (suggested by Omnius) Increased the effect of education on the unemployment rate (in general: more education => more unemployment). Capped the maximum amount of jobs that can be shared between cities to 50,000. Gulags capacity multiplied by 4 (and profits by 2), Rehab capacity x2, Prisons capacity x2. Have to be rebuilt to take effect. Made floating alert icons more visible. (suggested by GeneMonty) Bug Fixes Amount of printed money was not saved. (reported by Jacob) Park paths built on beaches were not taken into account for the quality of life. Increased land v…
- Patch 1.2.0c - 27 April 2022
The new pathfinding algorithm was causing lags and crashes in cities with complex road networks. Holes between roads or incomplete networks were causing "Can't reach workplace". The AI can now U-turn when the road ahead is missing. The 2048 tiles commute length limit was not taken into account, leading to infinite commute length and crash to desktop. Improved performance. Smarter distribution of heavy tasks (heatmap layers update, traffic update, terrain update) across frames. Optimized car and pedestrian AI. Optimized heatmap computation. Park paths could never be destroyed when a road intersection were built next to it (reported by Livonia). Reduce lag when building highway access roads. Fixed blinking issues on textures (reactivated mipmaps on the occlusion layer of the materials). Balanced the propagation of pollution, spread of polluted areas was asymmetric. Residential buildings w…
- Patch 1.2.0b - 26 April 2022
Major fixes Fixed a major error affecting the number of jobs created by the upper class (was 10x the intended value). A lack of workforce was probably affecting your city as soon as the upper class grew. Social class distribution % values were incorrect. Could lead to a negative incarceration rate. (Reported by Omnius, thank you!) The effect of policies on political affiliations was incorrect when the policies were mostly left leaning. (Reported by BiOxYdE, merci!) Effect of policies on pollution was incorrect! Eco-friendly policies now have greater effect on reducing pollution. Thanks to Alex Vagni for reporting this discrepancy! New algorithm for the propagation of pollution. Polluted areas were taking too long to clean up if pollution ceased. Pollution might get all over the place after loading your city for the first time with the patch, it'll take a few in game years to stabilize.…
- Update 1.2.0 - Mining, Harbor, Trade Balance - 22 April 2022
New Added underground resources, 4 types: Oil, Gas, Common Ore and Rare Ore. Resources first need to be looked for using the prospecting tool (under the industry buildings tab). Depending on the ore available underground we can then place a mining lot which will instantly build 1 of the 5 mining buildings (an oil field, a gas field, an open pit mine, an underground mine and an offshore rig). Mines and rigs provide jobs, tax income and improve the trade balance. Added a container port and container ships. Ports increase the value of a city's exports. The trading capacity of ports is shared accross all cities (like power production). Added trade balance, takes into account the exchange rate, the trade capacity (from ports and airports) and of course the imports/exports ratio. The trade balance is NOT shared accross cities. The census tool will show the exports/imports balance for each com…
- Patch 1.1.4c - 30 March 2022
A quick patch of a patch to fix the terraforming issue. BUG FIXES - Terraforming tool was not functioning. Other tool such as bulldozer and road builder were not updating terrain. - Updated credits and start screen - Optimizations to the terrain updating process - Commute types data in stats for air taxi usage was incorrect. - Exchange Rate in Nation view was incorrect - Props and parked vehicles took too long to update - Trying to purchase a new city tile without enough money will now play the negative chime. - Shadow quality "Low" settings will now disable all shadows completely (great for older CPUs!).
- Patch 1.1.4b - 29 March 2022
A couple of important bug fixes and other changes that could not wait for update 1.1.5 to be published. Air Taxis were sometimes not showing up and a memory leak has been finally solved. NEW - Bus and train stops can now turn a profit if enough commuters are using the service. - Abandoned buildings are now painted in red in the land use layer. CHANGES - Faster update of commute paths (x6). This should help citizens change mode of transport if a new one is made available. - Faster business demand evolution when points are added (x1.5), slower when points are subtracted (x0.75) - Faster spawn of new business buildings (x3 in large cities). Abandoned buildings can be rebuilt in less time. - Faster stability regeneration when no government buildings exist. - When a business is abandoned or destroyed 50% of the demand is now recovered (prevents fast unemployment spike) - Changed computation…
- Update 1.1.4 - Temperate and desert biomes, flying cars, new easy mode - 25 March 2022
NEW - New Biomes: Arid and Temperate. Your Nation will now have different climates ranging from the North to the South with vegetation and terrain color progressively changing depending on altitude and latitude. Closer to the North you'll find the temperate climate with spruces and yellow oak trees. In the center at lower altitude you'll find the sub tropical climate (the default existing biome). To the South, a more arid, desert like biome with palm trees and cactuses. In total 6 new trees have been added. Different types of trees are now assign to lots depending on their level of wealth. Trees on road sides are not affected by climate. - New difficulty settings. The old options have been entirely replaced with new presets so that the easy mode is actually easy. 3 options: * Easy: This is a difficulty level that could be considerate in par with today's other management games. Starting…
