Devlog · 4 October 2026

Five leisure venues, and homes you can tell from shops

This update is about the everyday city rather than its landmarks: places for residents to spend an evening, streets that are easier to read at a glance, and better advice when growth stalls.

Five places to go out

There are 5 new small leisure venues, each taking a single tile: the cinema, bowling alley, arcade, playground and swimming pool. Each one makes the homes within its reach happier, and the playground and the pool are especially popular with families. They also lift land value around them, and when you inspect one it shows a ring for the area it serves.

They differ in size and cost. An arcade is cheap to run but only draws from a few streets around it. A playground needs no power at all. A swimming pool serves a wide area but uses a lot of water. The playground and the arcade arrive early, with More than houses; the cinema, bowling alley and pool follow with A town that pays its way.

The combined happiness bonus from leisure venues is capped at 8 points. That cap is deliberate: it means a mix of different venues serves a neighbourhood better than five cinemas in a row, which is both more realistic and more interesting to plan.

Parks that serve a neighbourhood

Parks used to give the city a share of happiness that shrank with every new resident, so a growing city always seemed to need another park. Now each park serves the homes within walking distance, up to a fixed number of residents. The advice when growth stalls has changed to match: it only suggests a park while parks are still short of serving most homes. After that it points you to a leisure venue that does not yet reach the lot, or to the real levers, such as jobs, services, safety and taxes. The why isn't my city growing? guide covers each of these.

Homes and shops at a glance

Zoned homes and shops used to share the same brick and sandstone palette, which made it hard to read a district from above. Now shops and offices use cool concrete, steel and glass with bright signs, while homes keep warm stone, render and brick. Offices on taller commercial lots have ribbon glazing that glows a cool white at night, commercial flat roofs carry a sign facing the street, flat-roofed homes grow roof gardens, and homes get railed balconies. Shop windows are now limited to the ground floor of taller shops, as on a real high street.

Grass is drawn as one smooth surface without a line round every tile, and flat roofs are pale gravel with fewer solar panels. The result is a calmer map, and it also draws slightly faster.

Seeing digital coverage

A new data overlay shows digital coverage: the streets, fibre and buildings on a working digital network, and the range of each cell tower, fading towards its edge. You can pick it from the overlay selector, cycle to it with Shift+D, or jump to it from the Digital card in the Services app. If a district is not getting online, this is the quickest way to see why. The utility networks guide explains how the digital network is put together.

A new website

The Blockline website has been rebuilt as well. Its centrepiece is a city that grows as you scroll, drawn live by the game's own renderer, chapter by chapter through the charter, with traffic, a train and turbines turning. Below it, cards for each walk-in venue show what the inside looks like.