The fact that Cities: Skylines 2 is getting better at last is all well and good, but it’s still not as good as it should’ve been, and so the archetypal city-builder fan of yore might be looking elsewhere for their next darling. Could Metropolis 1998 be it, perhaps?
In truth, even though Metropolis 1998 shares its niche and genre with Cities: Skylines 2, the two games couldn’t really be further apart in practice. What we’ve got in front of us here is a supremely nostalgic and ridiculously delightful retro pixel city-builder with a deep focus on customization and personalization. With no release window in sight, you might be thinking this is just one more work-in-progress project to throw onto the Steam Wishlist pile and forget about, but there’s a fancy new demo coming soon, so strap right in.
Metropolis 1998 is getting a new demo soon
Fact is, Metropolis 1998 has been in active development for a fair while now by Yesbox Studios, and it even had a playable demo released last year which enjoyed a fair bit of acclaim from those who got around to playing it. This demo hasn’t been accessible for some time now, but Yesbox Studios’ latest production update claims that the developer will “try to push out an updated demo this month,” meaning sometime in July 2024. This means we should be able to play a more comprehensive vertical slice of the game in relatively short order, which in turn means Metropolis 1998 should be on your docket, too, if you’re a city-building fan.
This game doesn’t hide its penchant for nostalgia. It’s basically purpose-built to appeal to the classic SimCity demographic and it’s got some truly phenomenal pixel-art to keep things interesting. The bit that makes Metropolis 1998 much more than just nostalgia-bait (and a counter to Skylines, in a way) is that it allows the player to design their own buildings via the Blueprint system, on top of engaging with the in-depth citizen-level simulation systems.
In theory, this should make Metropolis 1998 by far the most customizable city-builder we’ve seen yet, though we’ll obviously need to wait for the demo to see for ourselves how that might pan out. So, do stay tuned: the demo may well end up dropping sometime over the next couple of weeks, and I don’t think genre fans are going to want to miss out on this one.
Note, too, that on top of there being no release window in sight for Metropolis 1998, the game will also release in Steam Early Access, so we’re a fair bit away from anything resembling a complete product. But gosh, doesn’t it look awesome on the screenshots?
