Developers at Iceflake Studios want problems in their upcoming Lego-themed city builder, Lego Skylines, to be visible directly in the game world rather than buried in menus and statistics screens, as is often the case in Cities: Skylines. Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun, game director Lasse Liljedahl and producer Joanna Ronkanen explained that issues such as crime and fires will play out visibly, with police chasing robbers or fire crews responding to blazes, so players can spot and address problems just by watching their city rather than digging through data.

Because Lego is a family-friendly brand, the studio must carefully balance realism with tone, drawing on the humour of recent Lego films, such as a firefighter pausing to toast a hotdog rather than tackle a fire. One unresolved challenge is how to depict homelessness, a natural consequence of the game's underlying economic systems; Ronkanen said the team is still working out a suitably light-touch approach, floating ideas such as minifigures searching for flats on their phones or carrying "house wanted" signs, similar to protesting citizens in Anno 1800. The writer, who played the game for around 40 minutes at Gamescom, described it as a fully-fledged city builder in the vein of Cities: Skylines or Anno, wrapped in Lego's colourful aesthetic, with some systems simplified and others made more complex than its inspirations.