One of Opening Night Live 2026’s biggest reveals was LEGO Skylines, the “match made in heaven” mix of Paradox’s Cities: Skylines series and the famous building toys. It’s a perfect use of both brands on paper, and I’m happy to report its preview build at Gamescom was a highlight of the show.
Iceflake Studios – the developer recently tasked with reworking Cities: Skylines 2 – is on the surprise project, which has been in development for “five or six years” according to Joanna Ronkanen, producer. “When we started, I think it was a little bit more focused on the management side… but throughout the years, we’ve kind of found the sweet balance of bringing in the customisation that you can get from Lego sets,” she added before praising the LEGO Group as not only the IP owner, but also a helpful creative partner that walked the studio through its own internal design processes.
The preview build perfectly exemplified the renewed approach to Skylines’ core mechanics and systems within a far more relaxed sandbox that no doubt will appeal to a wider crowd. Things could get more complex as the game opens up, but LEGO Skylines feels more like a puzzle game of sorts for people who love Lego dioramas. It’s more tangible and lets players zoom in really close to the minifigures and sets, letting us even “glue” individual decorations to every single house or building.
“One of the big things was always to make it as accessible as a city builder as there can be. Cities: Skylines 1 and 2 being on the more hardcore management side, there can be a certain hesitancy to start playing,” Ronkanen explained. Indeed, while there’s a management side to LEGO Skylines – citizens still have needs and plenty of requests – it’s more of a numbers game when it comes to building enough shops or working places, among other things, for them.
The bigger focus on individual buildings and plots of land means that zones (as understood in the Cities: Skylines games) are less important. However, boosting everyone’s happiness with the right direction and accessories still requires smart planning. Leaving enough “gaps” between houses, streets, and whatnot to plop down the items that improve the happiness in their surroundings was a central part of the loop both during the tutorial and in an advanced save that featured a massive city that covered several interconnected islands.
Of course, looking at the usual demands of sprawling simulation games and the fact LEGO Skylines is targeting all current-gen platforms – including Nintendo Switch 2 – we had to ask Iceflake about optimisation: “It’s gonna be a technical challenge always to render as many brick as you can already see in the game,” she said, with another member of the team adding there’s “a lot of shader magic” involved. Indeed, magic has to be present in the process, as the level of detail across the board is staggering. From afar, you’re seeing a dense, bustling city, but the big shock comes when you zoom in and can even look at individual Lego citizens having a coffee on their balcony.
“Since we always knew this was gonna be a console game too, we’ve actually been developing constantly on consoles,” they said about the process. LEGO Skylines is less of a PC game being forced to work on consoles, and more of a true multiplatform project in which all platforms benefit from the work done on the others; at least that’s how Iceflake has approached it so far. “Whatever we do for the Switch 2 build kinda improves the PC and the other consoles as well.”
Of course, after a while tinkering with the surprisingly granular decorations system and the ability to randomise buildings of the same type from the selection available, we had to ask the developers if players could create blueprints from scratch and share them around like in recent Frontier-developed games. “I’m gonna say we’re not ready to speak about these yet,” Ronkanen replied. Don’t lose hope!
During our chat, we also confirmed Iceflake is looking to give players with beefier hardware “different kind of options” that push the visuals even further versus the console versions. “I think we have a ray tracing solution. There’s so many different things we’ve done at this point that they all kinda get mixed up, but we’re looking at all that.” Of course, no details to share yet regarding PC specs, but looking at the impressive late-game builds and considering the studio is open to letting players go crazy with scale, expect much more demanding requirements if you’re looking to push fidelity.
To offset the impact of denser, more detailed cities, we were told “the maps are maybe a little bit smaller than in Cities: Skylines”, but testing when it comes to playable space is still ongoing. Again, more limited maps add to the puzzle-like nature of LEGO Skylines that was felt throughout the demo. “It should be meaningful, where you’re placing buildings and how you populate those maps.”
When asked about their favourite part of the game so far, the developers circled back to the matter of “the flavour mechanic” – decorations that improve a building’s performance and are separate from regular ones – and representing the “modularity” of physical Lego sets through mechanics. They also highlighted the fact “we don’t zone the buildings”, giving players a more precise and hands-on approach that separates LEGO Skylines from its big relatives.
That said, Iceflake is still trying to “serve the more management-oriented players who might not be so much into customisation”, which is why there’s a randomiser building tool, and the game doesn’t really force you to engage with its decorations beyond a quick layer of placing default ones around for buffs.
Everyone involved clearly wants to create a more creativity-oriented Skylines spinoff that’s appealing to more people, but the shift isn’t a radical one. For now, however, we’ll have to wait to see how it all comes together during the later stages and how deep its mechanics and overarching systems go… With an enchanting style and a very easy-going attitude, I believe Paradox, Iceflake, and LEGO could have a hit on their hands.
LEGO Skylines will launch on PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 when it’s ready. No release window has been shared at the time of writing.
Loading comments…