Cities in Motion refer to a pair of business management simulation games developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive.
The goal of the games is to implement and improve a public transport system in various cities, both fictional and real-life. This goal can be achieved by building lines for metro trains, trams, boats, buses and helicopters. Players set ticket prices, hire inspectors to catch fare-dodgers, and please picky passengers.
Cities in Motion was released in 2011, and initially had four European cities—Amsterdam, Berlin, Helsinki, and Vienna. The campaign spans from 1920 to 2010, and features situations such as divided Cold War Berlin. A large number of DLCs were released, mostly providing extra cities to play on.
Cities in Motion 2 was released in 2013, and changed gameplay significantly. Cities went from being built on a grid to being true 3D, a day-night cycle was introduced (requiring a change in the game's time frame; previously a game year lasted around 5-10 minutes, now a game day equals 24 minutes), scheduling was added, and the historical real-world cities were replaced by more generic, but larger, modern cities.
See also the later Cities: Skylines by the same developer.
Cities in Motion contains examples of:
- Acceptable Break from Reality: The largest city in the first game, Berlin, has a population of around 35,000. Of course, vehicles also have scaled-down capacities; the largest subway train will carry only 95 people.
- Additionally, if a person can't get from one point of the map to another easily, they'll instantly teleport rather than, say, give up.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Helicopters. They ignore road traffic like subways and are loved by businesspeople, but are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, and have a very limited capacity.
- Big Applesauce: New York City (well, most of it, anyway) is available as a DLC map for the first game.
- Boring, but Practical: Buses. Don't need any other infrastructure besides bus stops (and depots in the sequel) and make use of existing roads.
- Colour Coded Companies: Your vehicles and station stops will all have the same colour.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Subways take a lot more time and money to build, but if you do it right, they earn oodles more money than anything else.
- Downloadable Content: Quite a bit, especially for the first game. Mostly in the form of extra cities.
- Karma Meter: Your company has a general approval number which is then divided into player approval by each societal group.
- Speaking Simlish / Voice Grunting: Cims in the first game make sounds of indeterminate language in the first game when selected. Some of it sounds vaguely like German (such as a retiree's cheerful "Moin Moin!") but most are incomprehensible mumbling.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Want to help some Boy Scouts reach their camping site? An old lady wants to sell her car and needs you to build her a bus line? The unemployed feel ticket prices are too high? Help them out and you'll get 1,500 Money!
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Less so than other simulation games, but it is possible to build an incredibly inefficient and overpriced transit network that people will be forced to use because they don't own a car.
- Even more possible in the sequel as the player is given control over the city roads.
