PREVIEW | CITYSTATE METROPOLIS | BUILD BEYOND THE GRID
A road bends around the edge of a lake, divides into two uneven neighbourhoods and reaches a dense commercial centre without ever surrendering to a rigid square grid. The buildings surrounding it are not selected from a small collection of fixed models. Their footprints, height, position, colour, parking areas and surrounding greenery can all be adjusted according to the type of city the player wants to create. Citystate Metropolis is built around the idea that urban design should produce more than attractive screenshots: every planning decision should influence housing costs, land value, social mobility, inequality and the long-term character of the population. Developed and published by solo creator Andy Sztark, the third Citystate project is moving away from the menu-heavy political simulation of its predecessors and toward a more interactive city builder in which architecture, economics and social policy operate through the same construction tools. The PC release is currently planned for Steam Early Access during 2026, although no specific date or quarter remains officially confirmed.
building policy instead of selecting it
The first two Citystate games approached urban development through extensive economic and political systems. Players adjusted policies, taxes and social variables through menus while the city responded to those decisions. Metropolis retains an interest in economics and society, but it changes the way those ideas are communicated. Instead of asking players to govern primarily through sliders, checkboxes and statistical tables, it places more responsibility directly inside the city plan. A neighbourhood built from compact, inexpensive apartment blocks should not produce the same population or economic outcome as one filled with large, energy-efficient buildings, extensive parking and carefully maintained green space. Lower construction standards may reduce housing costs and encourage rapid population growth, while expensive development can increase land value, attract investment and produce greater tax revenue. Neither direction is presented as a universal solution. The correct approach depends on whether the player is attempting to build an affordable city, an environmentally focused community, a wealthy financial centre or simply a visually impressive metropolis. This connection between form and consequence is the project’s most important idea. Many city builders divide creativity and simulation into separate layers. Roads and buildings determine how the city looks, while policies and statistical modifiers determine how it behaves. Citystate Metropolis wants the physical structure itself to become policy. The size of an apartment, the amount of parking attached to it, the density of a district and the quality of construction all become decisions with social and economic results. That approach could make the city easier to understand. When housing becomes unaffordable, the player should be able to look at the neighbourhood and recognise some of the reasons rather than searching through several hidden modifiers. When land values increase, the transformation should be visible in the buildings, density and population attracted to the area. The city is intended to become a readable record of its own development. The risk is that the relationship between design and simulation may become too predictable. If one building style always produces the best balance between cost and revenue, the freedom promised by the editor could gradually collapse into one optimal template. The full system will need enough variation in land value, services, transport, population needs and economic conditions to prevent urban planning from becoming a solved equation.
a city without the grid
Grid-less zoning is central to the construction system. Roads use spline-based tools, allowing them to curve naturally around terrain instead of following fixed tile directions. Zoning can fill irregular, polygonal and curved areas, while generated buildings adapt to the land available rather than demanding perfectly square lots. The current Early Access description lists more than 35 road styles, while the wider building toolkit is planned to include 40 road types alongside a park editor. This should allow districts to develop with different identities. A historic centre may use narrow roads and irregular blocks. Suburban neighbourhoods can spread through larger curved lots. Dense urban areas may place taller buildings directly against major transport routes, while parks, setbacks and open land separate quieter residential zones from industry. Removing the grid is not valuable only because curved roads look more natural. It changes how the player responds to geography. Hills, shorelines, rivers and narrow spaces can become meaningful planning constraints instead of obstacles that must be flattened or ignored. A road can follow a coastline, climb around a slope or divide around an existing district without producing the awkward empty triangles often seen when traditional zoning systems encounter curves. The system also creates a difficult technical challenge. Buildings must recognise irregular lots, roads must connect reliably, traffic must understand changing intersections and zoning needs to remain readable when boundaries are no longer aligned to a fixed tile structure. The developer has described the road and traffic systems as some of the most complicated parts of production, especially because pathfinding and visible movement must continue operating as the population grows. Citystate Metropolis therefore needs its construction tools to be more than flexible. They must be dependable. Creative freedom quickly becomes frustration when roads refuse to connect cleanly, buildings generate in unexpected positions or tiny zoning gaps appear between neighbouring areas. The Steam page states that the core interface, spline roads and grid-less planning tools are already highly playable, but their real strength will become clearer only after thousands of players begin constructing cities in ways the developer may not have anticipated.
procedural buildings with player control
Residential, commercial, industrial, service and utility buildings are procedurally generated rather than drawn from a limited catalogue of complete structures. Players can control height, width, general shape, colour, footprint and placement, while the surrounding lot can be divided between parking, trees and other uses. Buildings can be designed individually or created through presets when speed matters more than detailed control. The combination of procedural generation and manual editing could solve a familiar city-builder problem. Large cities often reveal obvious repetition because the same towers, houses and shops appear across dozens of blocks. Procedural variation should allow neighbourhoods to remain visually related without becoming identical, while player-defined rules can preserve a coherent architectural direction. That freedom also supports several levels of engagement. A player interested in architecture can design individual buildings and carefully shape every lot. Someone more focused on economics can prepare a few reliable presets and zone larger areas quickly. Metropolis does not appear to insist that every building must become a separate design project. The most interesting part is that customization is expected to influence simulation. Increasing the floor count creates more space but also changes density and infrastructure pressure. Adding parking consumes land that could have supported housing, greenery or commercial activity. Higher construction quality may improve attractiveness while increasing costs. The editor therefore functions as both an artistic tool and an economic instrument. Procedural generation must still produce believable results. A technically unique building is not automatically attractive, and random combinations can create structures that look less intentional than repeated handcrafted assets. The system will need strong architectural rules, appropriate materials and convincing transitions between building types to prevent cities from looking like collections of unrelated experiments. The footage and screenshots released so far show considerable flexibility, but Metropolis will ultimately be judged by how cities look after several hours of ordinary play not only by carefully prepared showcase districts. The project’s promise depends on procedural buildings remaining coherent at neighbourhood and city scale.
one million citizens without one million personal stories
Citystate Metropolis uses a crowd-based simulation rather than modelling every resident as a completely independent individual. Social and economic calculations operate mainly through households and buildings, while visible citizens and vehicles carry information produced by those underlying systems. The developer says this approach is intended to support populations exceeding one million without the severe performance limitations that can emerge when every person receives a complete daily schedule and constant individual pathfinding. This is an important distinction. A fully agent-based simulation can create memorable small-scale stories: one citizen leaves home, travels to work, visits a shop and returns through the same transport network. However, tracking enormous numbers of individual routines consumes significant processing power and can produce strange results when agents fail to find jobs, buildings or routes. Metropolis instead places the building at the centre of the social model. A household’s wealth, education and progression are connected to where it lives and to the conditions surrounding that property. Visible movement is generated from those larger relationships rather than serving as the only source of simulation data. This could make the model better suited to city-wide social change. Gentrification, segregation, income inequality and urban decline are collective processes. They emerge across districts and populations rather than from the life of one unusually detailed resident. A simulation operating at household and building level may be able to represent those patterns more clearly while still filling streets with believable activity. The trade-off is emotional distance. Citizens may appear less individual when their behaviour is primarily an expression of building-level data. Players who enjoy following one resident through a simulated day may find the population less personal than in an agent-focused city builder. The larger question is whether visible traffic will remain convincing. The developer has stated that the road system can already support hundreds of thousands of agents through multithreading and GPU instancing, but population scale alone does not guarantee realistic movement. Traffic must react properly to road capacity, employment patterns, district design and public transport while remaining understandable enough for the player to improve it.
society should be visible in the streets
Income disparity, gentrification, spatial segregation and urban decay are not intended to exist as background statistics. They should influence the physical development of districts and the residents who occupy them. The Steam description places these socioeconomic factors at the centre of the city’s growth rather than treating them as optional political flavour. That gives Metropolis an opportunity to explore consequences that city builders often simplify. A successful commercial centre can raise surrounding land values but push lower-income households out of the area. Strict building regulations can create attractive neighbourhoods while limiting the supply of affordable homes. Cheap construction can accelerate growth and improve access to housing but may reduce quality, environmental performance or long-term value.These relationships are more interesting than a morality system where one policy is clearly benevolent and another obviously harmful. Real cities contain competing needs. Affordability, density, environmental quality, tax revenue, transport and private investment frequently pull planning in different directions. The game’s design suggests that these tensions will emerge through development rather than scripted events. A district may change because new infrastructure increases its attractiveness, because surrounding buildings become more expensive or because regulations alter what developers can construct. The city should therefore evolve beyond the player’s original plan. Metropolis must be careful not to reduce social issues to simplistic formulas. Poverty cannot be represented only as low-value buildings, and gentrification cannot be treated merely as an aesthetic upgrade. The developer has acknowledged the importance of education, income, inequality and spatial segregation, but the quality of the final simulation will depend on how those relationships interact rather than how many terms appear in the interface. The subject also requires clear feedback. Players need to understand why a neighbourhood is declining without receiving a perfect prediction of every consequence. Maps, overlays and building information should reveal enough evidence to support planning while preserving the uncertainty of managing a complex city.
terrain before the first road
The map system combines real-world elevation data, handcrafted large-scale shapes, procedural noise and simulated erosion. River sources are added through prepared positions, while vegetation uses a mixture of generated patterns and rules. The developer says this method can create thousands of distinct terrains while avoiding some of the artificial fractal shapes common in purely procedural landscapes. Each map covers approximately 67 square kilometres, around six times the area of the largest Citystate II map. Players can adjust forest density and terrain steepness, while dynamic water tools are intended to support rivers and lakes. Large maps fit the promise of million-resident cities, but scale is valuable only when the city remains interesting across that space. A huge region can encourage highways, separated satellite towns, industrial zones and large infrastructure projects. It can also produce empty distances and repetitive expansion when there are not enough systems to give each area a reason to exist. The terrain editor may help by allowing players to create specific planning challenges. A narrow peninsula demands different roads and density from a flat inland plain. Rivers can divide labour and housing markets. Hills can make low-density development easier while restricting major transport routes. The combination of large terrain and grid-less construction could become one of the game’s strongest creative systems. Instead of receiving a flat surface that exists only to hold buildings, players can begin with geography that shapes the city from its first road.
sandbox first, simulation second
Andy Sztark has been unusually direct about the lessons taken from Citystate II. In a postmortem, he explained that the previous game struggled to satisfy two different audiences: players looking for deep political simulation and those searching for a more accessible city-building sandbox. Metropolis shifts the balance toward creative construction while keeping economic and social systems underneath it. This does not mean that simulation has been abandoned. Budgets, taxes, traffic and the foundational economy are already listed among the active systems planned for the initial Early Access version. The difference is one of priority: the developer first wants roads, zoning and buildings to feel good before adding more layers of political or economic complexity. That is a sensible direction for a solo project. A deep simulation cannot rescue a city builder whose basic construction tools are unpleasant to use. Roads and zoning are the actions players repeat throughout the entire campaign, so weaknesses in those systems become more damaging with every hour. The challenge will be preserving enough of Citystate’s distinct identity. Many city builders already provide attractive construction tools and flexible sandboxes. The economic and social consequences are what can prevent Metropolis from becoming another city painter. Its strongest version would make creative freedom and simulation reinforce one another rather than allowing one to dominate. The official description captures this philosophy through three roles: architect, governor and world builder. The architect shapes buildings and neighbourhoods. The governor balances taxes, growth, affordability and investment. The world builder creates the terrain on which both operate.
a solo project with a long road ahead
Development began in December 2022 after the final Citystate II update. The project was originally discussed for a 2025 Early Access release, but that schedule passed, and the Steam page now lists only a general 2026 window. No exact release date has been announced. That delay deserves attention because Metropolis is unusually ambitious for one developer. Procedural architecture, grid-less zoning, traffic, social simulation, large maps and extensive editing tools would each present significant production challenges for a larger team. Combining all of them increases the risk that some systems will enter Early Access in a limited or unstable condition. The developer currently estimates that Early Access will last approximately 18 months. The initial version is expected to include procedural buildings, grid-less planning, spline roads, active budget, economy and traffic systems, and residential, commercial, industrial, service and utility structures. Several major features are planned for the journey toward version 1.0 rather than guaranteed for the first public build. These include rail transport, subways, tunnels, pedestrian paths, bicycle lanes, informal housing, universities, landfills, ports, airports and expanded modding support. That distinction is important. Public transport and large infrastructure are central to metropolitan planning, so their absence or limited state during early development could restrict the kinds of cities players can build. The Early Access release should be evaluated according to what it actually contains, not according to the complete 1.0 plan. The current Steam page also lists Workshop support, giving the project a path toward community-created content. Modding could be especially valuable for procedural buildings, road styles and regional architecture, but the developer describes broader support as something that will continue expanding before full release.
performance may define the entire project
City builders reveal performance limitations gradually. A small town may run smoothly while a dense city exposes problems with traffic, simulation, rendering and memory use. Citystate Metropolis makes population scale a major promise, so performance cannot be treated as a secondary technical concern. The crowd-based simulation is intended to reduce CPU pressure compared with tracking every citizen independently. GPU instancing should also allow large numbers of visible agents to appear without rendering each one through a completely separate process. Those choices are encouraging, but they remain claims that need to be tested across different city sizes and hardware configurations. The published PC requirements currently list 16 GB of RAM for both minimum and recommended configurations. Minimum graphics include a GTX 1060 6 GB or RX 5600 XT, while the recommended level lists an RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6600 XT. The processor recommendations range from an Intel i3-10300 or Ryzen 5 3600 at minimum to an Intel i5-12400 or Ryzen 5 7600 for the recommended setup. These specifications may change before or during Early Access. The real test will not be whether an empty map reaches a high frame rate. It will be whether simulation speed remains stable when hundreds of thousands of residents, vehicles, buildings and economic relationships operate simultaneously. Saving, loading, zoning large areas and recalculating traffic after major road changes must also remain manageable. A million-resident city would be impressive, but a smaller city with reliable performance and meaningful simulation would be more valuable than a huge one whose systems become unstable.
what citystate metropolis must prove
The project already has a clear identity. Its combination of grid-less urban planning, editable procedural buildings and visible socioeconomic consequences separates it from city builders focused only on decoration or logistics. What remains uncertain is whether those systems will form one coherent simulation. Buildings must respond naturally to land value and regulation. Traffic must understand irregular road networks. Citizens must make cities feel populated even without complete individual simulation. Social change must be visible without becoming simplistic. The editor must provide freedom without requiring every player to become an architect. Interface design will be equally important. Metropolis wants to expose complex relationships through physical construction, but players will still need tools for budgets, taxation, traffic, education, income and land value. A clean interface can connect those layers; a crowded one could recreate the spreadsheet problem the project is trying to leave behind. Content variety is another question. Procedural generation can create thousands of building combinations, but cities also need regional character, recognisable service buildings and visual progression. A small town should not merely look like a metropolis with shorter structures. Districts should change as wealth, density and infrastructure develop. Finally, the Early Access roadmap must remain realistic. Railways, metros, ports, airports and expanded modding would each significantly change the game. Adding them while maintaining existing systems will require time, testing and careful priorities from a solo developer.
