Cities: Skylines II trailer reveals audio grouping feature, disaster alerts and more

Colossal Order’s anticipated city builder Cities: Skylines II has a new feature highlight trailer, which explores the music and sounds used to create a realistic setting and fitting mood. The new gameplay shows how ambient sounds match camera movement and weather, the variety of unique sounds for citizens, music and news on the radio, and more.

Cities: Skylines II launches October 24th, 2023. It will be available on PC, Xbox and PlayStation. You can watch today’s “Sound & Music” gameplay trailer on the game’s official YouTube channel:

Sound and music are probably considered a minor element of Cities: Skylines II, since it doesn’t involve gameplay mechanics. Even the smaller feature highlights, such as the episode about progression, hint at the way the gameplay loop has evolved since the original Cities: Skylines.

But today’s trailer, which released like clockwork on Labor Day, does a good job of reminding players how impactful sound and music can be. As players add new businesses, vehicles, and more, corresponding layers of sound will sell the true expansion of their city.

The new trailer also reveals that sound and music will indeed tie directly into gameplay after all. For example, Cities: Skylines II will use radio news as another way to alert the player that disasters are on the way.

This is similar to the return of Chirper, which was explored in the Citizen Sim and Lifepath trailer. In fact, individual citizens will have unique musical cues to serve as a shorthand for the player to understand their mood. It’s a little surprising this wasn’t covered in the citizen sim footage.

Sounds will change based on the camera’s position, distinguish North American and European sound effects like police sirens, and reflect the function of different buildings. Like each of the previous feature highlights, the devs continue to prove just how creative they’ve gotten with the details.

You can read more about Cities: Skylines II, Colossal Order, and other popular sim franchises by checking out the rest of our news section.