LEGO Skylines is shaping up to be a treat for fans of the Danish toy brand
It’s one of those things that seems like a no-brainer. A city-building game made out of LEGO? The two things go hand-in-hand, surely, and so it’s nothing short of amazing that it’s taken this long until we’ve had one. In development from Iceflake Studios – a Paradox Interactive brand – is LEGO Skylines, a spin-off of the highly regarded Cities: Skylines. It feels like it’s been a heck of a long time coming, but now I’ve had my hands on it, I’m confident it’s going to have been worth the wait.
If you’re familiar with Cities: Skylines, you’ll have some idea of what to expect. Starting from a tiny settlement, you can eventually grow a huge city, complete with skyscrapers, shops, offices, factories, homes, schools and everything else it takes to keep a city running smoothly. As you’d expect, though, LEGO Skylines has a more family-friendly audience, and so its systems are a little easier to get to grips with.
It’s not quite as easy as I’d perhaps anticipated, though. You’ll still have to ensure you have electricity, water and sewerage systems in place if you want your city to be happy and healthy. You’ll still need to think about placement of buildings, ensure road routes are set up correctly and make sure your residents have adequate access to education and entertainment. But with a user-friendly presentation and menus that are easy to navigate, nothing is too complex to get to grips with.
Play through LEGO Skylines’ main campaign and you’ll have a series of missions to complete. Citizens of your city will ask you for certain things – maybe they want a park near their house, or maybe they need you to build a farm so their family can earn a living – and so working through these quests will give you a sense of progression. All the while, you’ll need to grow your city, too. The preview build I’ve been playing let me start a new game, working from having just one house to a cosy little village – but it also had a late-game build with a huge, sprawling city.
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In full flow, LEGO Skylines really is something to behold. You can zoom out, viewing your city from an eagle’s eye perspective. Or you can zoom right in to street level, experiencing your citizens milling around, visiting shops and living their best lives. Naturally, everything is made out of LEGO and it looks utterly fantastic – you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re living in The LEGO Movie.
My only real complaint is that there aren’t really any actual LEGO sets recreated in the game – at least not that I’ve spotted in the preview build. A few look similar; a number of Tudor-style buildings looked a lot like last year’s Tudor Corner modular set. But it would have been nice to see more familiar buildings for those of us who spend a lot of time building with physical bricks.
The upside to that is that you have a decent amount of customisation options, allowing you to change the appearance of the buildings in your city at a whim. You can change colours, decorate gardens of houses and a whole lot more. And if you want to ensure your residents are as happy as can be, you’ll need to pay attention to their likes and wants – they’ll be happier placed near amenities that match their interests.
Of course, the full release of LEGO Skylines is still a way off, and Iceflake Studios still has plenty to announce. So much, in fact, that there’s a newsletter you can sign up to on the official website to keep you afloat with any announcements. I’m definitely excited to see more, but I’ve seen enough to know that LEGO Skylines is a must-play for any city-building fan with a love of the Danish plastic bricks.
LEGO Skylines is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 and PC.
