Image credit: Iceflake Studios/Paradox Interactive/LEGO Company
LEGO games can be found in almost any gaming genre, ranging from action titles to fast-paced racing games. As a fan of strategy games and cozy titles, I was ecstatic to hear about LEGO Skylines, an upcoming city builder in the LEGO world.
Coming from the teams at Iceflake Studios and Paradox Interactive, LEGO Skylines is an intuitive and almost meditative city building experience. I had the chance to dip into an early preview, thanks to the folks behind the game, and was impressed with what I found. Here’s Kyusai’s LEGO Skylines preview, completed on PC.
Cozy, with lots of customization options
LEGO Skylines is a cute, blocky city builder, developed by Iceflake Studios and published by Paradox Interactive. I had the chance to dip into a few hours of gameplay, looking at both the early game and late game offerings, and was impressed with what I found.
As you might expect from a LEGO builder game, LEGO Skylines focuses on building up a thriving community, helping the inhabitants build their dream home. You have the power to build homes and customize each one in accordance with the resident’s preferences, along with shops, utilities, and city buildings.
In typical city builder fashion, you’ll need to manage the key elements of your city as it grows – electricity, water, sewage, garbage – along with traits that apply to your citizens, like happiness and level of education.
There are plenty of tools to help keep your residents happy and well looked after, ranging from plush private schools and fancy art museums, to cute parks and interesting sculptures. Almost everything can be customized to fit a particular aesthetic or art style, which I particularly loved.
There’s a decent variety of useful buildings, too, ranging in size and scope to fit a wider variety of maps and city designs. If an area needs a medical building but has limited space, for example, you can install a smaller medical pop-up instead of a full-sized hospital. There’s plenty of flexibility to be had here, and it gives the player lots of freedom.
The game has a smooth tutorial process – which I was relieved to see, as I find new strategy games and city builders can sometimes be too overwhelming to pick up at first. You’re introduced to the initial island village as a Master Builder, and tasked with building a family a new home.
The tutorial then meanders through the process of making your residents happy by fulfilling their wishes with quests and decorating their homes to suit their tastes. Some residents may prefer rustic decor, for example, while others prefer more modern designs.
One feature that I loved in the home customization section was the ability to create custom palettes. If there’s ever an option to make my game goth-adjacent somehow, I will – so being able to turn my villagers’ houses into various shades of plum, charcoal, and slate was joyful.
Perfect for fans of cute city builders
I spent a good chunk of my time in the earlier stages of LEGO Skylines, learning how the game worked, which stats to focus on when building up, and how to interact with the residents moving into my town.
The late stages of the game felt more complex, but still easy to parse. There was a brief moment where I hopped into the late game, waited for it to load, then went “oh god” as a sprawling city map popped into view, anticipating that it’d take me quite a while to figure out, but after a little experimentation, it felt just as simple to navigate as the initial village map.
There are different map views to toggle when you’re viewing your city, showing where you can improve elements like waste management and electricity distribution, and if you zoom in close, you can click on residents to see what they’re happy with or what they’d like to improve.
I enjoyed implementing helpful policies and bits of legislation, improving schools and healthcare, and seeing my residents get excited about new buildings they’d been wishing for, like art museums and extra schools; although I couldn’t always find which specific options they were looking for.
Senior centers were requested by my townsfolk, for example but I struggled to track down these particular buildings; there were a few placeholder building options in the preview, so it’s possible that this could’ve been a quest for the full release of the game.
As a whole, LEGO Skylines felt smooth and vibrant, with an approachable style of play that makes me feel as if it’d be a perfect first city builder for folks keen on getting into the genre. There’s some complexity in the late game, for sure, but comparatively, the initial learning curve is gradual and approachable.
I loved the aesthetics in this game, too. LEGO is typically vibrant and playful in its designs, and this was accurately encapsulated by LEGO Skylines. The decorations were cute and whimsical, and seeing the various building skins to choose from was exciting.
Performance-wise, LEGO Skylines ran well on my admittedly low-range PC, outside of a few quirks, like duplicate NPCs. The game didn’t throw up any major glitches or visual issues, although I did end up dropping down a few graphics levels to make the camera movement feel smoother with my limited hardware options.
The LEGO Skylines preview has cemented that this game will be a blocky bonanza for fans of city builders and cozy strategy games. It’s approachable to get started with, incredibly cute and vibrant in its aesthetic, and still offers a decent amount of complexity in its later stages for fans of more tactical management games.
FAQs
LEGO Skylines was developed by Iceflake Studios and published by Paradox Interactive – known for games like Crusader Kings 3 – in collaboration with the LEGO Company.
LEGO Skylines is a cozy city builder, letting players build their own metropolis and look after their citizens.
Yes, LEGO Skylines will have full controller support at launch, as per the game team.
While LEGO Skylines might not seem like a cozy game in the same way that Animal Crossing: New Horizons does, I’d class it as one regardless. Playing the game is soothing and meditative, and the visuals are incredible.
