Cities XXL

Cities XXL PC is a large-scale city-building and economic management simulation from Focus Entertainment, known in older materials as Focus Home Interactive. The current Steam listing still uses the exact name Cities XXL, with no verified rebrand or replacement edition. Its open-ended loop combines zoning, public services, traffic planning, pollution control, resource trading, and long-term growth across a network of cities.

Build a city from the road network upward

Cities XXL uses a top-down, zoomable camera with rotatable views, satellite presentation, and a closer postcard view for inspecting the finished city. You begin by selecting a location from the planet view, reviewing its terrain, available resources, and difficulty, then choosing a regional road style before laying out the first streets.

The main construction loop revolves around placing roads, defining residential, commercial, office, and industrial areas, and adding the services needed to keep different citizen groups satisfied. New structures unlock as the population and city progress increase, so expansion is tied to development rather than giving every building option immediately.

Growth depends on more than filling empty land. Citizens need employment, healthcare, education, security, shopping, leisure, and efficient access to services. Companies also require workers, transport links, and appropriate resources. A successful layout therefore has to balance housing density, employment access, service coverage, and the cost of expanding infrastructure.

Traffic, pollution, and urban services

Transport is one of the most important management layers. Cities XXL supports road networks, buses, railways, and metro lines, with traffic analysis tools that help identify congestion and overloaded routes. Commercial and industrial districts generate movement as citizens travel to work, shop, and use leisure facilities, while companies depend on roads and freight connections to operate.

The game also tracks localized air pollution and noise pollution. Their spread is affected by nearby roads, industrial activity, and the game’s wind system, making pollution a placement problem rather than a single global statistic. Industrial buildings can receive ecological upgrades, while green structures such as park-and-ride facilities, bicycle rental services, and electric car dealerships offer additional ways to reduce environmental pressure.

Leisure and tourism are part of the urban economy as well. Marinas, cruise ports, tourism airports, landmarks, and other attractions can improve the city’s appeal, but they still need suitable transport and supporting services. These systems give the sandbox a practical rhythm: expand the tax base, respond to new needs, fix bottlenecks, and reinvest in the infrastructure that makes further growth possible.

A planet-wide economy instead of one isolated map

Cities XXL is structured around a collection of cities rather than a single permanent settlement. The planet view lets you create or load cities in different regions, then compare their terrain, resources, and development conditions. Maps include varied environments, from snowy and mountainous areas to greener inland regions and seaside locations.

The distinctive feature is intercity resource trading. Cities can produce surpluses and exchange them for shortages, with OmniCorp acting as the default trading partner. Once several cities exist, they can trade with one another at more favorable rates, allowing you to specialize a settlement around particular resources and use that production to support other urban areas.

Trade covers practical city inputs such as waste management, oil, fuel, and water, as well as worker and visitor capacity. Shortages can damage company finances and citizen satisfaction, so the resource network is not just an optional bonus. It is a long-term planning tool that rewards players who build complementary cities instead of repeating the same layout on every map.

Scale, styles, and ecological content

The official feature set lists 1,000+ buildings, 47 architectural styles, and more than 65 landscapes. The variety is aimed at visual and structural experimentation: a player can build a dense metropolitan center, a suburban settlement, a resort-oriented city, or an industrial location shaped around local resources.

Regional road choices add another layer of presentation. American, English, French, German, and default road types change road markings, signs, and service vehicles, helping a city’s visual identity match the selected architectural direction. The game also includes selectable skies, moods, and times of day, which are primarily presentation tools rather than separate gameplay modes.

Progress is tracked through cumulative trophies tied to milestones such as population growth and citizen satisfaction. There is no conventional story campaign to complete. The real mastery loop comes from improving layouts, stabilizing increasingly complex economies, developing multiple specialized cities, and building a larger network without allowing traffic, pollution, or service shortages to undermine growth.

Content model and Workshop support

The current Steam content listing presents Cities XXL as a paid base game with a separate free tool named Cities XXL - Map Editor. No paid expansion pack or season-pass structure is prominently listed with the current base product, so the core content is centered on the main game, its maps, and user-created additions.

Steam Workshop support is a major PC feature. Players can browse and use community-made buildings, landscapes, roads, highways, scenery, and other content. The official documentation also describes FBX support and tools for creating new assets, giving experienced users a path from 3D modeling software to in-game Workshop content.

The map editor expands that ecosystem beyond importing individual assets. It supports editing terrain and working with heightmaps, while the official editor documentation explains that it is especially suited to modifying existing terrain or importing prepared heightmap data. This makes the PC version more attractive to creators than a closed, purely decorative city sandbox.

Who Cities XXL suits on PC

Cities XXL fits players who want a relaxed but detailed economic city builder with a large construction canvas and many maps to revisit. It is particularly suitable for sandbox planners who enjoy zoning, transport diagrams, visual theming, citizen satisfaction, environmental management, and building a chain of cities that share resources.

It is less suitable for players seeking a structured campaign, scenario-driven objectives, competitive online city building, or direct cooperative construction. The Steam listing includes multiplayer as a user-defined tag, but the game’s actual city loop is single-player: intercity trading connects your own settlements rather than allowing several players to manage one shared metropolis in real time.

Players who prefer stronger survival pressure may find a sharper settlement challenge in survival-focused city builders like Banished, while Cities XXL is more interested in planned expansion, urban services, and large-scale economic development.

PC platform features and practical details

The current PC storefront lists Steam Workshop, Steam Cloud, Steam Achievements, Steam Trading Cards, and Family Sharing. The game is designed primarily for keyboard and mouse control, with manual-documented shortcuts for camera movement, zooming, view changes, demolition, screenshots, windowed mode, pausing, and time-speed controls. No official full controller-support feature is advertised on the current listing.

Steam activation is required, and the installation documentation specifies an internet connection for product activation. The storefront also requires acceptance of a third-party EULA. The current listing does not advertise a separate anti-cheat system or a standalone launcher outside the Steam ecosystem.

Interface and subtitle localization is listed for English, French, Italian, German, Spanish from Spain, Polish, Russian, and Traditional Chinese. Full audio is not listed for these languages, so the supported language information should be understood primarily as interface and subtitle localization.

Similar city-building games

Cities XXL’s closest appeal is its combination of zoning, transport, services, and economic balancing. Players wanting a denser production-and-logistics challenge can compare it with deep industrial city simulators such as Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic, although that game demands more detailed supply-chain planning.

For a more politically focused city-building experience, economic and faction-management sandboxes like Tropico 4 put greater emphasis on ruling a single island, elections, policies, and competing social groups. Cities XXL remains the better fit when the main attraction is designing multiple large urban environments and linking their economies.

Cities XXL FAQ

Is Cities XXL still the current name on PC storefronts?

Yes. The current Steam and Focus Entertainment pages use Cities XXL. Older entries in the same franchise include Cities XL, Cities XL 2011, Cities XL 2012, and Cities XL Platinum, but no verified storefront rebrand replaces Cities XXL.

Is Cities XXL multiplayer?

No shared real-time multiplayer mode is documented for Cities XXL. Its planet view connects multiple cities created by the same player, allowing them to trade resources, workers, visitors, freight capacity, and passenger capacity within a single-player management loop.

What does the base game include?

The base game includes its city-building sandbox, more than 65 landscapes, over 1,000 buildings, 47 architectural styles, transport systems, ecological structures, pollution management, trophies, and intercity trading. Steam also lists a separate free Cities XXL - Map Editor tool.

Does Cities XXL support mods?

Yes. Steam Workshop support allows players to download and use community-made buildings, roads, landscapes, scenery, and other assets. The documented modding workflow also includes FBX support and a utility for uploading creations to the Workshop.

Does Cities XXL support controllers?

The current storefront does not advertise full controller support. The documented control scheme is built around keyboard and mouse input, including keyboard shortcuts for camera operation, demolition, view changes, pausing, and time controls.

What is the main gameplay goal in Cities XXL?

There is no fixed campaign victory condition. The core objective is to grow stable cities, unlock more buildings, satisfy increasingly demanding citizen groups, control congestion and pollution, and use trade between specialized cities to support a wider urban network.