Highrise City Will Leave Early Access Later this Year; Science Update Now Available

Deck13 and Fourexo Entertainment announced Highrise City will leave early access later this year.

In addition to that, Highrise City‘s science update is now available. This massive patch overhauls UI, adds a new research system, additional milestones, smaller visual improvements, and a number quality of life improvements.

This is the final pre-full release update, with the full list of improvements listed below.

Full Changelog:

• New UI
• New Research Menu
• Research Missions
• HUD displays unemployed people per citizen stage. You can switch between relative to the camera position and absolute numbers
• New animations for building selection
• Improved the tutorial for new UI elements
• Reduced Zone 4 & 5 building cists
• Added 6 new Milestones
• Optimized the game a lot, depending on the machines memory now citizies with up to 50 Million citizens are possible
• Improved distance from where on vehicles are visibile
• Vehicles will reduce their speed when they reach their target
• Improved the time it takes to save the game
• Reduced size of savegames
• Improved loading times
• Reduced memory use while saving and loading
• Improved quality of shadows
• Increased the stoarge of local storage by 100%
• Fixed a bug which sometimes would block jobs from being taken
• Improved Chinese language
• Carriers now highlight their trucks
• Garbage Zones can only be build near the Garbage Carrier
• Compass now turns correctly
• Number of vehicle spawns are now connected to the city size
• Police, Firetrucks and Ambulances now start at their buildings
• Construction sites now have different colors
• If the player does not have enough resources during the Tutorial, the player can still finish it
• Increased number of resources for each new city for every difficulty mode
• Fixed a bug when building a farm
• If you press “M” or “N” buildings now turn smoother when you build them
• New Building Model: Fishery
• New Building Model: Bank
• New Building Model: Wind Turbine
• New Building: Tidal Power Station
• New Building: Global Carrier

Steam Blog

While a date was not given for when Highrise City will leave early access, the following features are planned for the release version.

Features for Full Release:

• Public Transport with Buses
• Special gigantic mega skyscrapers
• Story Missions
• Substations & Electricity Lines
• Updated Voice Overs
• A small Story
• A massive multi staged mega project to build
• A new Map
• New Production Chains

Of course, smaller changes, quality of life improvements are also planned. But especially the new electricity management and the public transport will change how you build cities. In addition to that, that secret mega project is something very, very special. We’ve been working for months now on some of these features and are glad that we can finally confirm that we’ve been working on them. And we can’t wait to show you more.

But does that mean, that Highrise City will soon be finished? No. Of course not. It means we’ve come to a point where we have the game in a stage where we can say it is ready for a Full Release. But obviously we have tons of ideas for additional content and we will still keep optimizing the gameplay experience and work on additional stuff.

Steam Blog

With so many changes coming Fourexo Entertainment confirmed there will be a slight price increase at the end of the month.

For those looking for more information about Highrise City can find the official overview below.

About the Team & Game

Obviously, you as a player will compare Highrise City with other games. If you are comparing the game with other city builders, keep in mind that the focus of Highrise City are the production chains – the results of these will lead to an ever growing city. The game is more than a traditional city builder and has a strong influence of economy simulations. It was developed by a small team as a passion project during the last 8 years while 7 years the game was a one man project.

Let’s grow a city!

Highrise City offers a new spin on City Simulations & Tycoon games expanding the economy and resource management aspect. Experience a modern take on the genre enriched with a complex resource based economy system. Highrise City combines two genres in new and interesting ways: City Builders and traditional Economy & Resource Management Simulations. Highrise City offers you challenging gameplay and gives you all the possibilities and tools you need to create a living and breathing city. Take care of your city and make it grow and flourish into a giant Metropolis!

Plan your Megacity

In Highrise City you do not only build a city, you also actively manage it by handling the economical supply for it. Organize and build supply chains in an efficient way and make sure your economy is well balanced to guarantee a steady growth. By doing so you will be able to create true megacities.

Features

• More than one million inhabitants per city
• 5 different population classes
• More than 250 base buildings
• 50 different resources
• More than 30.000 buildings per city
• More than 5.000 cars and vehicles per scene (and more than 20.000 per city simulated)
• More than 20.000 people per scene (and more than 1 million per city simulated)
• 196 sq km possible playground per map
• Adjustable difficulty levels for beginners and advanced players
• Improve the city with laws and technology researches
• Resource trading to balance your economy
• Building Editor

Enjoy your work

Once you managed to create a prosperous and growing city, time has come for fine-tuning and further growth. But in the meantime, you should also take a break and just enjoy what you have created. Watch the people filling the streets and minding their business. In Highrise City you can see thousands and thousands of people and cars in the same scene filling your city with life. Micro animations hidden everywhere will brighten up your day and create the feeling of a miniature world.

Mod support and Steam Workshop integration

You want to implement your own buildings? Your own skyscrapers? Change the whole balancing, include your own types of streets? That’s what we are aiming for with Highrise City as well. The integrated building editor allows you to easily develop and implement an individual look for your custom city. Sharing your creativity with the community via Steam Workshop will also be a given.

Steam Listing