Skylines new replacement is about to become the best strategy game in years

The calendar of upcoming game releases is absolutely stacked with major launches leading up to GTA 6, but my list of most anticipated games just got a new addition: Transport Fever 3 from Urban Games. I’ve spent a lot of time in simulators over the last few years, though I admit I had no idea about this third Transport Fever game’s existence until its most recent features trailer landed in my inbox. It might not be a full city builder like Cities: Skylines or even a hybrid like Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic, but Transport Fever 3 is digging into the management aspects and quality-of-life improvements I’ve been wanting from city builders for a long time.

Transport Fever is technically a tycoon sim and a logistics management puzzle first, city builder second, but it looks like developer Urban Games is leaning a bit more into the city management aspect this time. Like in previous games, the big idea is building a transport network that supports enough trade for your settlement to grow from a squalid little village to a magnificent metropolis. If traffic lanes are unclogged and passengers get to their destination on time, everyone’s happy, and the city grows.

That growth requirement is still largely true for Transport Fever 3, but Urban Games is making happiness more complicated. Now, in addition to making sure industries have the goods they need and folks aren’t stuck in traffic, you have to consider things like noise and environmental pollution levels. Cities: Skylines factors those into health and happiness too, but you can get around it by building the right kind of road or just having a medical center near polluted areas or a cemetery for when nature, aided by your negligence, takes its course. Mitigating factors in Transport Fever 3 are less easy to come by.

Outside the obvious things like industrial areas causing pollution and trains making noise, you have to consider the effects your infrastructure placement have outside the city. Putting a depot or airport in the rural countryside may seem like an attractive option, but folks won’t be happy you’ve despoiled their bucolic idyll. You’ve also got upgrades to contend with. Your mid-sized city might be doing just fine, but once its needs grow and you have to start expanding and improving your road networks, the problems, Urban Games promises, can pile on. Which is exactly the kind of friction I want. Too often, I find myself just letting established districts in Skylines do their own thing once I’ve optimized them, as they require little or no attention from then on.

One other thing that piqued my interest is how much attention Transport Fever 3 seems to pay to the smaller details. You’ll pick road and rail track types based on the kind of industry that can best utilize them and what the cargo’s expected delivery date is. Food items need reliably fast transport; fuel and non-essentials, not so much. (And, of course, each road type has its pros and cons. There is no perfect city — just a way of balancing problems so most people are satisfied.)

You can make an intersection just by intersecting roads, which sounds simple, but for anything more complicated than a standard four-lane intersection, both Skylines games still make you use pre-made intersections that take up a ton of space. It’s not intuitive or enjoyable to use. And for busy intersections, you’ll even have control over traffic light patterns and traffic flow, even down to designating which lanes are turn lanes.

Transport Fever 3 is expanding industries as well, making new and different ones appear depending on location and demand. You can also “prospect” to sound out locations and potential demand for new industries. Cities: Skylines‘s industries DLC is one of my favorite parts of the game, the way it alters your production plans and opens new possibilities for additional industries and settlements, so this is something I’ll be keeping a close eye on. I’m less keen on the “greenification” prospect in Transport Fever 3, though. It seems like less of a strategic option and more a “click button, spend money, problem solved” scenario, which seems a bit shallow compared to everything else I’ve seen so far.

The features trailer only showed brief highlights, so perhaps there’s more depth to making your transport networks eco-friendly. Regardless, I’m now eagerly waiting for Urban Games to announce Transport Fever 3‘s release date. Please, just don’t do it in September like everyone else.