11 Sep 2026Developer post

Dark Mode Was Left in the Dark

Hello everyone! Short week, it's back-to-school season, I took the time to read through your feedback and it turns out the latest build of City Game Studio has a small bug that took me a while to solve. Let me tell you about it right away. This week's recap In a previous update,

Hello everyone!

Short week, it's back-to-school season, I took the time to read through your feedback and it turns out the latest build of City Game Studio has a small bug that took me a while to solve. Let me tell you about it right away.

This week's recap

In a previous update, I'd spent quite a bit of time fixing a crash that happens rarely, but still happens. To put it simply, City Game Studio initializes bit by bit, one element after another.

The thing is, on certain configurations, initialization doesn't happen in exactly the same order every time. That can be due to the hardware setup, a temporary hiccup on the machine, anyway, it happens rarely, but it happens. And when it does, the game freezes and stops responding entirely, or even crashes outright.

To avoid this problem, I spread the game's loading across several cycles. So when the configuration element finishes loading, it emits a signal saying it's ready. Then the theme manager listens for that signal, and waits for it before starting to load.

The original problem is solved, but another one shows up. What happens when the configuration module finishes loading and emits its "ready" signal, but the theme manager hasn't had time to start listening for that signal yet?

As you've probably guessed, the theme manager then fails to adjust window and text colors when you switch to dark mode. Super annoying, and it took me a while to figure out that's where the problem was coming from. Especially since it worked some of the time, but not all the time...

Anyway, this bug is now fixed, dark mode fans should be happy, and sorry about that one, everyone!

What's coming next

As usual, we're getting close to September 23rd, so I'm going to keep going through your feedback and bug reports to make as many fixes as possible so that v1.28's release goes as smoothly as possible.

I'm also taking the opportunity to prepare the update announcements, and to fill out the to-do list for v1.29, which should come out in December 2026.

Anyway, I'm still hard at work, more on the administrative side this time than the development side, but that's totally normal and expected. That's how I manage to keep a pace that lets me ship a major update every quarter!

Thank you for reading, see you next week,
In the meantime, take care of yourselves
Xavier aka Binogure
Kisses

Original post

04 Sep 2026Developer post

The Date Is Set: September 23rd

Hello everyone! It's back-to-school season, and v1.28 is coming up fast. I've planned to release it on September 23rd, 2026! There you go, I've dropped the release date for v1.28.0! I hope you're just as excited as I am for this update! This week's recap Since we're getting close

Hello everyone!

It's back-to-school season, and v1.28 is coming up fast. I've planned to release it on September 23rd, 2026! There you go, I've dropped the release date for v1.28.0! I hope you're just as excited as I am for this update!

This week's recap

Since we're getting close to the release date for v1.28, this version only contains fixes, and rather minor ones. Let's start with save management. It could happen that if you loaded a save while already in-game, well, it just wouldn't work. So I spent quite a bit of time testing to track down the bug and finally fix it. It was a simple fix, yet a necessary one.

Another, slightly odd bug concerned employees. When you paused the game, their energy bar would still go up. Meaning they could end up going on vacation while the game was paused. This little bug took me longer than expected, since normally, when the game is paused, the energy bar's animations are supposed to be paused too. But that wasn't the case. So I reworked that part and completely disabled animations when the game is paused, to avoid this kind of small bug.

The last bug is a nasty one, and fixing it took me the rest of the week. It concerns how City Game Studio manages its interface. Basically, every time a panel is displayed, the game stores that panel's information in an array. The game then uses that array to know how many popups are currently displayed. In the vast majority of cases, that works fine. But there are certain edge cases where a popup ends up not being properly registered in the array, and so it's no longer accounted for by the game. Yet that popup is still there, and that's what causes the bug.

So what's the bug, you'll ask? Great question. In that case, the popup is present in the game, it's invisible, but it blocks all interaction with the game. In other words, you can't click on anything at all, yet the game isn't frozen, it still responds fine, but that hidden popup blocks every interaction.

While this only happens rarely, it's a major issue, since it pauses the game and blocks all progress. So I completely reworked how popups are managed, so that the interface manager dynamically asks how many popups are currently present in the game, instead of storing each popup in an array. That way, even if two popups appear at the same time, it's not a problem, since the interface manager will dynamically count the popups present.

Put like that, it sounds pretty simple, but I had to do a full pass over every interface in the game to make sure they all worked correctly. And to really put it to the test, I used a tool called an auto-clicker. That let me simulate 1,000 clicks per second while spawning about a hundred popups. Result: it works well and it's rock solid. So I'm happy with the outcome.

What's coming next

So I'm pretty happy with myself, the game is fairly stable now, and quite a few bugs have been fixed. As a result, I'm going to allow myself to work on adding features. I'll admit that during my long testing session, I had a lot of fun doing a full run of City Game Studio, but I would have liked more impactful in-game events.

I did have events that had an impact on me. Fans asking for an update, or a sequel. A theme becoming popular after a game's release, interviews, console or exclusivity contract negotiations. That's already quite a few events. But I think we're missing events involving employees. In the end, you interact a lot with the different players in the video game world, manufacturers, journalists, players, but rarely with your own employees.

So that's what I'm going to focus on. That's it for me, this devlog is already over, thank you for reading.
See you next week,
In the meantime, take care of yourselves
Xavier aka Binogure

Original post

02 Sep 2026Developer post

Patch v1.28.0-rc8

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’.

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’. The Unstable branch should now be available for you to choose from. Please leave any feedback you may have in the appropriate channel in our Discord, or in the subforum on Steam. As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Unstable, in case they want to avoid spoilers. Please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.

Changelog - rc8

Bugfix

Rework the User Interface popup algorithm to prevent a soft lock, meaning you cannot click on anything.
Rework the scene management algorithm, fixing an issue when trying to load a savegame from within a savegame
Staff appeared to be resting when the game was paused, but it was purely a display issue, behind the scenes, they weren't actually resting
The panel to move items around now shows up when renting/buying a new building

Previous Changelog

Game genre

Friendslop games
Rework the game genre algorithm to hide the composed game genres. Not removed though, to stay backward compatible

Digital store

Interface rework, not final, still a work in progress. The feature list is going to get reworked
Rework the feature list
Streamline the feature development (fewer popups)
Rework the feature-achieved popup
Make some features not disableable (cross-platform and store)
- Fix the digital store when activating the store.
  - Once activated, can't be disabled
- Fix the cross-platform feature:
  - Once activated, can't be disabled
Add a feature so you can assign a network manager to the digital store
- Assign a network manager to the digital store to reduce the server load overall
Add a feature so you can organize festivals:
- Assign a marketing manager to the digital store to organize festivals
Once the festival feature is activated, it shows the current festival theme when you hover over the feature item. It's a tiny detail, I do hope it counts

Market Research

Remove the market research genre type
Remove the market research platform type
Add a new market research type, a unique one, that helps you research everything tied to a single genre, from platforms to themes. It's straightforward and streamlined.
Take into account previous market research so we don't research the same items more than once.

Interface

Improve the construction panel
Improve the devkit panel

Misc

Can adjust your own salary
When starting a new game, save the following settings:
- Player name
- Character customizations (shirt, pants, hair, skin, accessory...)
- Company name, logo and specialization
- Map size
- Game speed
- Advanced start state
- Starting year (for advanced start)

Optimization

Rework the launch mecanism to defer threads creation
Prevent th game to reload itself twice for no reason
Rework the launch mecanism to defer the initialization of the game managers

Game engine

New feature when making games:
- Text-based games
- Split screen

Game Creation

Rework the game engine button to list features (not visible at all)

i18n

Rename "Puzzle" and "Classic Puzzle" in English to "Puzzle" and "Brain Teaser"

Mod

Add a new field to the digital store and mods: disableable. So when a new feature is added, you can tell if it's disableable or not.

HR

Add the ability to send your staff on vacation if they're not happy

Mod

When there's a lot of mods to load, the game doesn't show anything until the first mod is loaded.
When playing offline, don't load the mods (since the mods are not available).

Cheatcode

You can now always win Game of the Year: `game always-win-goty 1` to enable

Bugfix

When playing offline, don't disable or load mods, simply don't use them until Steam is back online
Fix crash when closing the game
Fix the pagination buttons (on the staff panel)
Fix the tooltip when furnishing items
Fresh compilation of the engine (Godot Engine 2.1 custom)
Wait for the game to launch before creating any threads, to prevent race conditions.
Fix an issue with the currency panel (null button)
Fix Game DLC: assigning new studios didn't work at all.
When loading a game, theme trends were recomputed (very old bug). Now everything is cached, and updated only when needed.
GOTY: Events were not canceled when they should be (requires at least 3 competitors to run a GOTY event)
Contract: fixed an issue where you couldn't take a contract once a console was off the market. Contracts are now forced to renew at least once a month to avoid this situation.
Some USB devices might crash the game (Windows only)
Closing City Game Studio while in fullscreen exclusive mode doesn't re-enable HDR (Windows only)

Original post

28 Aug 2026Developer post

Back-to-School, Meet v1.28

Hello everyone! Summer is already well underway, back-to-school season is coming, and with it, v1.28. Obviously it's not quite complete yet, there are still a few small things missing. But already, the current version fixes a lot of bugs and greatly improves the gaming experience

Hello everyone!

Summer is already well underway, back-to-school season is coming, and with it, v1.28. Obviously it's not quite complete yet, there are still a few small things missing. But already, the current version fixes a lot of bugs and greatly improves the gaming experience!

This week's recap

This week I worked a lot on genres. I wanted to add a new genre, but the graph that lets you unlock genres was really packed to the brim. So one of you suggested hiding redundant genres. And that's a great idea, so I put it into practice.

For example, the Action RPG genre is a combination of the Action and RPG genres. Previously in City Game Studio, it wasn't possible to combine two genres. But since then, things have changed. And it's now possible to create the Action / RPG genre even if the Action-RPG genre already exists. A lot of you asked me why the Action-RPG genre exists if you can just make the Action / RPG combination. So now, the Action-RPG genre will be hidden by default, since you'll be able to achieve the same result by combining the Action and RPG genres.

That freed up some space in the genre graph. And it let me add the Friendslop genre. It's a fairly recent term, I believe it dates back to 2025 or so. So it doesn't necessarily have a translation in every language yet.

I had to rework quite a few interfaces to keep everything consistent, which took me a fair amount of time.

The next part only matters for Windows users, since these bugs aren't present on Mac or Linux. First off, if you have somewhat exotic USB peripherals, you'll be happy to know that the game no longer crashes on startup.

For Windows users playing in exclusive fullscreen, the game will now automatically restore HDR when you close it. It's a small detail, but I think it matters to you. More a comfort improvement than a small detail, really. Having to unplug your USB peripherals just to play the game is a bit annoying. Same goes for having to restore HDR every time you close the game.

What's coming next

So, the banker already offered you a mortgage that raises taxes for a fixed duration. So I wanted to work on something I'd already done. That's why I went and fixed bugs and crashes instead!

Anyway, for the coming week, it'll mostly be fixes. You play the game and report every bug you run into on the unstable branch, and I fix them, that's the deal!

I'll probably still add a few small things to the game too, some comfort improvements as usual.
That's it for me, see you next week,
In the meantime, take care of yourselves
Xavier aka Binogure

Original post

26 Aug 2026Developer post

Patch v1.28.0-rc7

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’.

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’. The Unstable branch should now be available for you to choose from. Please leave any feedback you may have in the appropriate channel in our Discord, or in the subforum on Steam. As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Unstable, in case they want to avoid spoilers. Please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.

Changelog - rc7

Game genre

Friendslop games
Rework the game genre algorithm to hide the composed game genres. Not removed though, to stay backward compatible

Bugfix

Some USB devices might crash the game (Windows only)
Closing City Game Studio while in fullscreen exclusive mode doesn't re-enable HDR (Windows only)

Previous Changelog

Digital store

Interface rework, not final, still a work in progress. The feature list is going to get reworked
Rework the feature list
Streamline the feature development (fewer popups)
Rework the feature-achieved popup
Make some features not disableable (cross-platform and store)
- Fix the digital store when activating the store.
  - Once activated, can't be disabled
- Fix the cross-platform feature:
  - Once activated, can't be disabled
Add a feature so you can assign a network manager to the digital store
- Assign a network manager to the digital store to reduce the server load overall
Add a feature so you can organize festivals:
- Assign a marketing manager to the digital store to organize festivals
Once the festival feature is activated, it shows the current festival theme when you hover over the feature item. It's a tiny detail, I do hope it counts

Market Research

Remove the market research genre type
Remove the market research platform type
Add a new market research type, a unique one, that helps you research everything tied to a single genre, from platforms to themes. It's straightforward and streamlined.
Take into account previous market research so we don't research the same items more than once.

Interface

Improve the construction panel
Improve the devkit panel

Misc

Can adjust your own salary
When starting a new game, save the following settings:
- Player name
- Character customizations (shirt, pants, hair, skin, accessory...)
- Company name, logo and specialization
- Map size
- Game speed
- Advanced start state
- Starting year (for advanced start)

Optimization

Rework the launch mecanism to defer threads creation
Prevent th game to reload itself twice for no reason
Rework the launch mecanism to defer the initialization of the game managers

Game engine

New feature when making games:
- Text-based games
- Split screen

Game Creation

Rework the game engine button to list features (not visible at all)

i18n

Rename "Puzzle" and "Classic Puzzle" in English to "Puzzle" and "Brain Teaser"

Mod

Add a new field to the digital store and mods: disableable. So when a new feature is added, you can tell if it's disableable or not.

HR

Add the ability to send your staff on vacation if they're not happy

Mod

When there's a lot of mods to load, the game doesn't show anything until the first mod is loaded.
When playing offline, don't load the mods (since the mods are not available).

Cheatcode

You can now always win Game of the Year: `game always-win-goty 1` to enable

Bugfix

When playing offline, don't disable or load mods, simply don't use them until Steam is back online
Fix crash when closing the game
Fix the pagination buttons (on the staff panel)
Fix the tooltip when furnishing items
Fresh compilation of the engine (Godot Engine 2.1 custom)
Wait for the game to launch before creating any threads, to prevent race conditions.
Fix an issue with the currency panel (null button)
Fix Game DLC: assigning new studios didn't work at all.
When loading a game, theme trends were recomputed (very old bug). Now everything is cached, and updated only when needed.
GOTY: Events were not canceled when they should be (requires at least 3 competitors to run a GOTY event)
Contract: fixed an issue where you couldn't take a contract once a console was off the market. Contracts are now forced to renew at least once a month to avoid this situation.

Original post

21 Aug 2026Developer post

Text-Based Games and Split-Screen Arrive

Hey everyone! Finally, a bit of a calmer week! I worked hard to deliver what I promised you, and even a little more. I'm starting to get really into the details for the digital store, and that's nothing but good news for you! Let me tell you about it right away. This week's recap

Hey everyone!

Finally, a bit of a calmer week! I worked hard to deliver what I promised you, and even a little more.
I'm starting to get really into the details for the digital store, and that's nothing but good news for you! Let me tell you about it right away.

This week's recap

It's done, it's in the game, I've added the two features to the game engine for better immersion! From now on, you'll be able to choose between 2D games and text-based games when you start a new game. That gives you more choice at the start, and I think it makes you feel less like you're on rails.

On top of that, there's a feature more specific to co-op games: the ability to make split-screen games. Honestly, all of this is just detail, but it adds a little extra layer of immersion, and that's exactly what you want in a simulation game, right?!

Also, I added one tiny detail to the digital store. The feature that lets you organize festivals will now tell you the theme of the current festival. When I say I'm getting into the details, that's what I mean. You do have to hover over the feature to see the info, but it's there.

After that, I took the time to read through your feedback and fix a couple of small things. For example, competitors could win Game of the Year even though they were supposed to be excluded. The other annoying bug affected contracts. A contract could stay on your contract list indefinitely. That's now fixed, and along with it, a bit of contract rebalancing was needed. Now, at least one new contract will appear per month.

What's coming next

v1.28.0 is already packed with new features on top of a game that's already pretty complete! So I've still got a few small things left to add, I mentioned it last time, it's about the banker. I want to give them the ability to offer mortgages. It's a small detail, but I want the mortgages the banker offers to be slightly different from the ones you can set up yourself in the finance panel. I've got a pretty clear idea of how I want to do it, so I'll tell you more about it once it's implemented!

There you go, that's it for this one already, thank you for reading.
See you next week for the next post.
In the meantime, take care of yourselves!

Xavier aka Binogure

Original post

19 Aug 2026Developer post

Patch v1.28.0-rc6

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’.

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’. The Unstable branch should now be available for you to choose from. Please leave any feedback you may have in the appropriate channel in our Discord, or in the subforum on Steam. As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Unstable, in case they want to avoid spoilers. Please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.

Changelog - rc6

Digital Store

Once the festival feature is activated, it shows the current festival theme when you hover over the feature item. It's a tiny detail, I do hope it counts

Game engine

New feature when making games:
- Text-based games
- Split screen

Bugfix

When loading a game, theme trends were recomputed (very old bug). Now everything is cached, and updated only when needed.
GOTY: Events were not canceled when they should be (requires at least 3 competitors to run a GOTY event)
Contract: fixed an issue where you couldn't take a contract once a console was off the market. Contracts are now forced to renew at least once a month to avoid this situation.

Previous Changelog

Digital store

Interface rework, not final, still a work in progress. The feature list is going to get reworked
Rework the feature list
Streamline the feature development (fewer popups)
Rework the feature-achieved popup
Make some features not disableable (cross-platform and store)
- Fix the digital store when activating the store.
- Once activated, can't be disabled
- Fix the cross-platform feature:
- Once activated, can't be disabled

Add a feature so you can assign a network manager to the digital store

Add a feature so you can organize festivals. Assign a marketing manager to the digital store to organize festivals

Market Research

Remove the market research genre type
Remove the market research platform type
Add a new market research type, a unique one, that helps you research everything tied to a single genre, from platforms to themes. It's straightforward and streamlined.
Take into account previous market research so we don't research the same items more than once.

Interface

Improve the construction panel
Improve the devkit panel

Misc

Can adjust your own salary
When starting a new game, save the following settings:
- Player name
- Character customizations (shirt, pants, hair, skin, accessory...)
- Company name, logo and specialization
- Map size
- Game speed
- Advanced start state
- Starting year (for advanced start)

HR

Add the ability to send your staff on vacation if they're not happy

Mod

Add a new field to the digital store and mods: disableable. So when a new feature is added, you can tell if it's disableable or not.
When there's a lot of mods to load, the game doesn't show anything until the first mod is loaded.
When playing offline, don't load the mods (since the mods are not available).

Game Creation

Rework the game engine button to list features (not visible at all)

Cheatcode

You can now always win Game of the Year: `game always-win-goty 1` to enable

i18n

Rename "Puzzle" and "Classic Puzzle" in English to "Puzzle" and "Brain Teaser"

Optimization

Rework the launch mechanism to defer thread creation
Prevent the game from reloading itself twice for no reason
Rework the launch mechanism to defer the initialization of the game managers

Bugfix

When playing offline, don't disable or load mods, simply don't use them until Steam is back online
Fix crash when closing the game
Fix the pagination buttons (on the staff panel)
Fix the tooltip when furnishing items
Fresh compilation of the engine (Godot Engine 2.1 custom)
Wait for the game to launch before creating any threads, to prevent race conditions.
Fix an issue with the currency panel (null button)
Fix Game DLC: assigning new studios didn't work at all.

Original post

14 Aug 2026Developer post

A Week of Heavy Debugging

Hello everyone, It was a very intense week, I spent a lot of time debugging City Game Studio. That means studying dump files, which contain all the game's traces and let me understand why the game isn't working properly. And you might not realize it, but this kind of thing takes

Hello everyone,

It was a very intense week, I spent a lot of time debugging City Game Studio. That means studying dump files, which contain all the game's traces and let me understand why the game isn't working properly. And you might not realize it, but this kind of thing takes time. Time I couldn't spend on other things. As you'll have understood, I had to revise my plans. So let me tell you about it right away!

This week's recap

This week, two people ran into major crashes at game launch. So I looked into these crashes and reworked the game's startup to make it less abrupt.

Previously, City Game Studio loaded everything it could into memory all at once while starting up. That works fine in the vast majority of cases, but not in every single case. That's why I reworked the game's startup to delay the loading of less important modules. From now on, the game will display much faster, while spreading out over time the loading of elements that aren't essential.

As a result, you'll feel like the game launches almost instantly, or at least much faster than before, and that's a good thing. But these changes didn't fix the crashes, in fact they highlighted a problem inherent to the engine I use, namely Godot Engine.

Indeed, there's a bug that only affects Windows and involves USB peripherals connected to your computer. Certain devices plugged into your computer can cause the game to fail to launch properly, or cause it to become unresponsive ("Not Responding"). It could be a Blue Yeti microphone, or a USB-C device, and to fix the issue there's a somewhat old-school but highly effective method.

Unplug all your USB peripherals except your mouse, and launch the game. If everything works, plug your peripherals back in one at a time, until City Game Studio crashes again. And there you'll have your culprit.

For those who want to know more, it's all here:
https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/99106

What's coming next

Well, since I wasn't able to work at all on what was planned, I'm going to do more or less the same thing I had planned for last week. Adding features to the game engine, but also making fixes. Because this week I kept gathering your feedback, so there are extra things to do that will still improve your gaming experience!

That's it, this rather unusual blog post is now done, thank you for reading. See you next week, with fewer bugs this time,
In the meantime, take care of yourselves
Xavier aka Binogure

Original post

12 Aug 2026Developer post

Patch v1.28.0-rc5

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’.

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’. The Unstable branch should now be available for you to choose from. Please leave any feedback you may have in the appropriate channel in our Discord, or in the subforum on Steam. As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Unstable, in case they want to avoid spoilers. Please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.

Changelog - rc5

Optimization

Rework the launch mechanism to defer thread creation
Prevent the game from reloading itself twice for no reason
Rework the launch mechanism to defer the initialization of the game managers

Previous Changelog

Digital store

Interface rework, not final, still a work in progress. The feature list is going to get reworked
Rework the feature list
Streamline the feature development (fewer popups)
Rework the feature-achieved popup
Make some features not disableable (cross-platform and store)
- Fix the digital store when activating the store.
- Once activated, can't be disabled
- Fix the cross-platform feature:
- Once activated, can't be disabled

Add a feature so you can assign a network manager to the digital store

Add a feature so you can organize festivals. Assign a marketing manager to the digital store to organize festivals

Market Research

Remove the market research genre type
Remove the market research platform type
Add a new market research type, a unique one, that helps you research everything tied to a single genre, from platforms to themes. It's straightforward and streamlined.
Take into account previous market research so we don't research the same items more than once.

Interface

Improve the construction panel
Improve the devkit panel

Misc

Can adjust your own salary
When starting a new game, save the following settings:
- Player name
- Character customizations (shirt, pants, hair, skin, accessory...)
- Company name, logo and specialization
- Map size
- Game speed
- Advanced start state
- Starting year (for advanced start)

HR

Add the ability to send your staff on vacation if they're not happy

Mod

Add a new field to the digital store and mods: disableable. So when a new feature is added, you can tell if it's disableable or not.
When there's a lot of mods to load, the game doesn't show anything until the first mod is loaded.
When playing offline, don't load the mods (since the mods are not available).

Game Creation

Rework the game engine button to list features (not visible at all)

Cheatcode

You can now always win Game of the Year: `game always-win-goty 1` to enable

i18n

Rename "Puzzle" and "Classic Puzzle" in English to "Puzzle" and "Brain Teaser"

Bugfix

When playing offline, don't disable or load mods, simply don't use them until Steam is back online
Fix crash when closing the game
Fix the pagination buttons (on the staff panel)
Fix the tooltip when furnishing items
Fresh compilation of the engine (Godot Engine 2.1 custom)
Wait for the game to launch before creating any threads, to prevent race conditions.
Fix an issue with the currency panel (null button)
Fix Game DLC: assigning new studios didn't work at all.

Original post

07 Aug 2026Developer post

More Control, More Depth

Hi everyone! Thanks for reading me twice a week, yep, a changelog every Wednesday and a devlog every Friday for years now, that's a lot of text! Anyway, this week I made good progress on the digital store, and above all I'm giving you more control and depth, let's go! This week's

Hi everyone!

Thanks for reading me twice a week, yep, a changelog every Wednesday and a devlog every Friday for years now, that's a lot of text!

Anyway, this week I made good progress on the digital store, and above all I'm giving you more control and depth, let's go!

This week's recap

First off, I worked hard on the bugs you reported to me. Everything should be fixed now, you can assign studios to your DLCs without it causing any issues anymore. And you can also open the financial panel without triggering an error either.

Next, a small interface change when creating a game, to improve the visibility of the button that lets you see upcoming features. It's really handy, but it was hidden, I'll admit it. Now it's big, and yellow. Hard to miss.

Now let's get to the main course, the digital store. Two new features to implement have been added. The first concerns server load. The new part is that you can assign a network administrator to this feature to boost it. And that'll make it even more efficient!

The second feature concerns festivals in the digital store. It overloads the servers, but boosts the hype for your games. And to make it even more profitable, you can assign a marketing manager! With this update, your digital store becomes even more customizable. And your employees will directly influence your digital store's performance!

What's coming next

So I know I'd mentioned other additions for the digital store. Namely, being able to assign a studio to meet players' needs. But I feel like that wouldn't add fun to the game, just difficulty with no real reward. So I'll see later whether to add it.

Right now, I'm going to focus on adding a new feature for game engines. Namely, the ability to make text-based games. It would be another type of rendering, alongside 2D and 3D. It would cost less, but above all it could let you tap into a GPU pool earlier in the game.

Anyway, I still have a lot on my plate, especially since the banker will need to offer you mortgages, and that's not quite finished yet either.

There you go, you know it all, I'm already done,
So see you next week,
In the meantime, take care of yourselves
Xavier aka Binogure

Original post

31 Jul 2026Developer post

The Digital Store Takes Shape

Hello everyone! A big week is already coming to an end, I fixed quite a few bugs and I still have a few more to sort out! Let me tell you all about it right away! This week's recap First off, the digital store. Its interface has changed a lot, and now lets you see what's going on

Hello everyone!

A big week is already coming to an end, I fixed quite a few bugs and I still have a few more to sort out! Let me tell you all about it right away!

This week's recap

First off, the digital store. Its interface has changed a lot, and now lets you see what's going on at a glance. It's visually more polished and more pleasant. Features now have small icons that explain how they impact the digital store, while the financial information has been reorganized to look nicer.

The first major change to the digital store has arrived. Some features can no longer be disabled. I'm thinking of the feature that lets you support several platforms at once, or even opening the store up to competitors. Once activated, these features will stay active forever.

On top of that, I did a lot of debugging work, since the game seems to crash on Windows when the setup is too powerful. City Game Studio actually creates threads at launch, and apparently that causes a few issues on certain configurations. I'm working on it, and if you're running into problems with the Windows version, try the unstable branch on Steam, it might be worth a shot.

One last change that affects game creation. The game will now remember you, your company, your outfits, your preferences. It's handy, easy to set up, and I had simply forgotten to do it.

What's coming next

Last week was pretty wild, with over 200 concurrent players on City Game Studio, and naturally a fair number of bugs along with it. I've read through all of them, and I'm going to fix them all. One issue concerns paid DLCs: if you switch studios, DLC development stops. It's not a huge deal, but it's annoying.

Another bug affects the financial panel, it should display certain buttons but doesn't, so I'm fixing it and that'll be that.

Now let's talk about the digital store. I've finished designing the upcoming features. And you're going to like this, because you're getting more control. Being able to develop new features, but also assign specialists who'll impact your digital store. A network administrator to optimize your servers, or a marketing manager to organize festivals, that's what's coming your way!

I still have a lot of work ahead, and after the digital store, I plan to add a feature to game engines that will let you make text-based games. Not 2D games, but actual games with just text in them.

That's it for me, thank you for reading, see you next week.
In the meantime, take care of yourselves,
Xavier aka Binogure

Original post

29 Jul 2026Developer post

Patch v1.28.0-rc3

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’.

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’. In the new window, select ‘Betas’. The Unstable branch should now be available for you to choose from. Please leave any feedback you may have in the appropriate channel in our Discord, or in the subforum on Steam. As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Unstable, in case they want to avoid spoilers. Please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.

Changelog - rc3

Bugfix

Fresh compilation of the engine (Godot Engine 2.1 custom)
Wait for the game to launch before creating any threads, to prevent race conditions.

Digital store

Rework the feature list
Streamline the feature development (fewer popups)
Rework the feature-achieved popup
Make some features not disableable (cross-platform and store)
- Fix the digital store when activating the store.
- Once activated, can't be disabled
- Fix the cross-platform feature:
- Once activated, can't be disabled

Mod

Add a new field to the digital store and mods: disableable. So when a new feature is added, you can tell if it's disableable or not.

Misc

When starting a new game, save the following settings:
- Player name
- Character customizations (shirt, pants, hair, skin, accessory...)
- Company name, logo and specialization
- Map size
- Game speed
- Advanced start state
- Starting year (for advanced start)

Previous Changelog

Digital store

Interface rework, not final, still a work in progress. The feature list is going to get reworked

Market Research

Remove the market research genre type
Remove the market research platform type
Add a new market research type, a unique one, that helps you research everything tied to a single genre, from platforms to themes. It's straightforward and streamlined.
Take into account previous market research so we don't research the same items more than once.

Interface

Improve the construction panel
Improve the devkit panel

Misc

Can adjust your own salary

HR

Add the ability to send your staff on vacation if they're not happy

Mod

When there's a lot of mods to load, the game doesn't show anything until the first mod is loaded.
When playing offline, don't load the mods (since the mods are not available).

Cheatcode

You can now always win Game of the Year: `game always-win-goty 1` to enable

Bugfix

When playing offline, don't disable or load mods, simply don't use them until Steam is back online
Fix crash when closing the game
Fix the pagination buttons (on the staff panel)
Fix the tooltip when furnishing items

Original post

24 Jul 2026Developer post

The New Look of the Digital Store

Hey everyone! I hope you're doing well, that you haven't been too hot, and that you're enjoying your summer. Here, it's both, I've been working a fair bit and also hitting the beach when I have time! Anyway, I made good progress, but as expected I didn't get everything done at on

22 Jul 2026Developer post

Patch v1.28.0-rc2

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’.

17 Jul 2026Developer post

Market Research, Simplified

Hey everyone! It's already Friday! Time flies at such a crazy speed, I barely notice it. Anyway, I didn't slack off this week! Let me tell you all about it right away. This week's recap I spent the week on a single task. One of the most important features of this update. It's the

15 Jul 2026Developer post

Patch v1.28.0-rc1

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’.

10 Jul 2026Developer post

Adjustable Salary & Smarter HR

Hello everyone! It had already been a few weeks since I last wrote a devlog! I honestly missed it, and I'm quite happy to come back and talk to you directly! Since v1.27.0, I've released 4 updates that mainly came to fix stability issues, but also added a bit of content. But that

Hello everyone!

It had already been a few weeks since I last wrote a devlog! I honestly missed it, and I'm quite happy to come back and talk to you directly!

Since v1.27.0, I've released 4 updates that mainly came to fix stability issues, but also added a bit of content. But that's not what we're talking about today, since this is the first devlog for v1.28, which is expected around mid-September.

This week's recap

I've been working hard, even though I was busy with a lot of other projects, I still got a lot done and added features that were needed and requested. The very first one concerns your first employee's salary, that's you! From now on, you can adjust it and set it to 0. This way, you'll save some money at the start of the game.

The second change concerns human resources. They let you manage employees' schedules, as well as salary raises. Now, human resources will also be able to manage employee happiness. There's a small gauge available that you can adjust. This gauge lets you set the minimum happiness level for your employees before they go on vacation. In other words, if you set the gauge to 50% happiness, and your employees are at 45% happiness, they'll automatically go on vacation. But if they're at 60% happiness, they won't go on vacation, unless their schedule allows it or they're exhausted.

On top of that, I made a few fixes related to mod loading, as well as the interface. In particular, the page that lets you build buildings, I've slightly reworked it, and it should be clearer now.

What's coming next

That's it for what's been done, and now for what's coming next. I have a big project ahead: the digital store. I want to completely rework it to make it easier to use, and give you more decision-making power.

I have other things planned too, like giving the marketing manager the ability to put games on sale automatically. Or reworking market research. In short, v1.28 will add depth to the game's secondary features. Something to make the biggest City Game Studio players happy!

I hope you like this plan, I know not all your suggestions are in there, and that's normal since I prioritize ideas based on their potential improvements to the game!

That's all from me, thank you for reading,
See you next week for the next devlog,
In the meantime, take care of yourselves
Xavier aka Binogure

Original post

08 Jul 2026Developer post

Patch v1.28.0-rc0

Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible. Access the Unstable branch on Steam by right clicking City Game Studio in your Steam library, and then select ‘Properties’.

Updates & announcements

This week's recap

What's coming next

Changelog - rc9

Bugfix

Previous Changelog

Game genre

Digital store

Market Research

Interface

Misc

Optimization

Game engine

Game Creation

i18n

Mod

HR

Mod

Cheatcode

Bugfix

This week's recap

What's coming next

Changelog - rc8

Bugfix

Previous Changelog

Game genre

Digital store

Market Research

Interface

Misc

Optimization

Game engine

Game Creation

i18n

Mod

HR

Mod

Cheatcode

Bugfix

This week's recap

What's coming next

Changelog - rc7

Game genre

Bugfix

Previous Changelog

Digital store

Market Research

Interface

Misc

Optimization

Game engine

Game Creation

i18n

Mod

HR

Mod

Cheatcode

Bugfix

This week's recap

What's coming next

Changelog - rc6

Digital Store

Game engine

Bugfix

Previous Changelog

Digital store

Market Research

Interface

Misc

HR

Mod

Game Creation

Cheatcode

i18n

Optimization

Bugfix

This week's recap

What's coming next

Changelog - rc5

Optimization