Cities: Skylines
Cities: Skylines is a modern city-building simulation game from Colossal Order. Players take on the role of mayor, building and managing cities from the ground up while balancing infrastructure needs including education, water, electricity, police, fire fighting and healthcare. The game features a detailed traffic simulation system, support for districts with customizable policies, a day-night cycle that affects citizen behavior and traffic patterns, and extensive modding capabilities through Steam Workshop. It is popular with casual and hardcore players alike who enjoy the deep simulation mechanics and creative freedom to design cities of any size or character.
AI Recommendation
1 suggestionCities: Skylines has never received a native Apple Silicon build. According to the developer Colossal Order, an M1 version will probably never happen. The game runs under Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon Macs today, and users report playable performance (20-40 FPS on mid-range M1 Pro machines), but Apple is removing Rosetta 2 in macOS 28 (late 2027), at which point this Intel-only build will stop launching entirely. You have approximately 18 months to plan your next steps. Your options are: (1) switch to Cities: Skylines II, the sequel which is available on Steam but also lacks a native Mac build and currently requires Windows via Parallels or CrossOver to run; (2) use Parallels Desktop or CrossOver to run the original game inside a Windows virtual environment, which will continue working beyond 2027 and may offer better performance than Rosetta; or (3) explore other Mac-native city-building games like Islanders or Two Point Hospital. If you invest significant time in Cities: Skylines and want to keep playing without virtualization, migration to another platform (Windows PC or console) may be necessary when support ends.
Recommended reading