The Cities: Skylines base game released back in March 2015 and since then, Colossal Order have rolled out a number of expansions that continue to make the game deeper and more customisable. If you’ve watched the Mass Transit reveal trailer, you’ll be familiar with the some of the new features that the developer is promising with this next expansion.
We had the chance to chat to Karoliina Korppoo, Lead Designer on Cities: Skylines while we were at EGX Rezzed last week. In this interview, we talk about what new features we can look forward to in Mass Transit, how existing mods will be affected and which parts of development were the most challenging this time around.
GameWatcher: Could you introduce yourself and give us a brief overview of what Cities: Skylines is as a whole, please?
Karoliina Korppoo: I am Karoliina Korppoo and I work as the Lead Designer on Cities: Skylines. Skylines is a game about creating a city that you want and managing it.
GameWatcher: What new things will we be seeing in the Mass Transit DLC?
Karoliina Korppoo: Mass Transit is the latest DLC that will come out pretty soon, but not this week! It’s mainly about transportation, as the name states, so we have added four new transportation types: blimps, cable cars, elevated monorails and ferries. Now the player can actually take control of areas of the map that they couldn’t before, so now the air and the water are usable and you can transport people on those two.
GameWatcher: A lot of players are excited for this DLC as it improves on a lot of the mods that players are already using in the game. How many existing mods did you take inspiration from and how did this shape development, overall?
Karoliina Korppoo: We looked at a lot of the most popular mods and in the end, I think we selected five or six (I can’t remember exactly) because we felt like these matched really closely with our ideas. We also picked these ones because we feel that they will benefit a lot of people because we know while the game is heavily modded and - that is important, we want to support modding – but we are also aware that many players do not use mods. We aren’t sure whether they don’t know how to mod or whether they just don’t want to but it should be a way to play the game. With the additions that we chose, inspired by mods, we feel that the game becomes more of the game that we want it to be and we feel that the community agrees with this. So, it’s basically information that the game already has and that the mods used to show but this is something that we want for all the players.
GameWatcher: Will all the existing mods still work with Mass Transit?
Karoliina Korppoo:: Not right away. It always takes time for mods to be updated but we do work really closely with the modders. Some of them will have access to builds a bit earlier than the general audience so that they can update the mods and have them working for the day of the release.
GameWatcher: As usual, the DLC is accompanied by a free update to the base game. What will be included in the free update?
Karoliina Korppoo: All of the mod-inspired stuff is in the free update because we wouldn’t feel comfortable selling the ideas of the modders. So, all of the quality of life improvements like the visual guides for road building are in the free update. It’s a collection of small things but all of those combined, in my mind at least, really make the game feel better.
GameWatcher: What has been the most challenging part of developing this expansion in particular?
Karoliina Korppoo: I think I have to say developing the road tool further because it is really essential to this game. You build roads all the time and through all of the gameplay so, adding visual guides and tweaking the tool has to be done really carefully with lots of testing. I think that took most of the time. After that, maybe the balancing of the new transport types – that is always slow work but I feel that we got it right.
GameWatcher: Quite a few fans are surprised by how quickly this DLC is releasing after your last one. Are you planning to keep up this kind of pace with future expansions?
Karoliina Korppoo: It depends on the size of the expansion because we still have a lot of stuff that we want to do for this game. We have plenty of ideas and our internal wishlist is so long, but it mainly depends on how big of an expansion we want to make next. We only want to do things well and not rush, if we don’t have to.
GameWatcher: In the Mass Transit trailer you state that the DLC is releasing “soon”. Do you have any idea how soon it will release?
Karoliina Korppoo: It will definitely release this year, but not that soon. It still needs some polishing touches at this point.
Every time we see a new Cities: Skylines expansion we just want to jump straight into the game and start playing again. If you haven’t played it yet, it’s definitely worth checking out and with the existing expansions and mods, we think you’ll find it very easy to lose a few hours building your perfect city.
