A huge update: the city improves from every side

One update that touches almost everything

The buses were one big, single feature. This update is something else entirely.

Instead of building one new big piece, we went through the whole city and polished it from every side: fires, water, noise, the entrance, the looks, the UI, and a pile of small but annoying things.

The result isn't one new button – it's the whole of Taajama breathing a little easier.

Fire no longer stays in one building 🔥

Fire used to be a nasty but local problem: one house burned, a resident put it out, life went on.

Not anymore.

An untreated fire that grows to medium size can now jump to the building next door – and from there to the next one. If the flames aren't tamed in time, you can lose a whole block. Fires also grow from a small kitchen mishap into a major blaze noticeably faster, so you have less time to react.

Fire doesn't respect the border between players, either: flames raging at the seam can spread to your neighbour's side.

The good news is that a quick response saves the day: get a firefighter on the scene and the spread stops completely. So build fire stations early, and don't leave a single fire smouldering – now it really matters.

Water became more complex 💧

Water used to be a bit too simple: build a pump, get water. Now there's real substance to it.

Groundwater is on the map. A water pump produces the most in the centre of a groundwater area and less the further out you go. Open the 💧 Water view to see the blue zones – that's exactly where the pump should go. Location is everything.

Drinking water quality now matters, too. If a pump stands on polluted ground, the whole network's drinking water spoils. Bad water lowers mood and makes people sick – there's a whole batch of new, partly ridiculous water ailments on offer. Networks joined by pipes and roads share their quality, including with your neighbour.

And when water gets dirty, you can also see it: polluted ponds and rivers gradually turn into proper muddy sewage water (oil film, foam, sediment). The dirtying takes days, not seconds – a pond darkens day by day toward brown, so you have time to fix things before the whole shore is ruined. A dirty shore is also a less desirable shore, and new residents avoid it.

Even clean water got a fresh look – a continuous, gently rippling surface. Now even a small pond looks alive.

Noise arrives on the map 🔊

The city now has noise – and its own map filter.

Factories, busy roads, wind turbines, shops and schools make noise, each at a sensible level: heavy industry is loud, but high-tech is quiet; shops and restaurants are noisy but offices aren't; wind power hums and schools buzz at recess. The more traffic, the more noise.

Noise doesn't pollute land or water – it's its own thing. For now it's just a visualisation, but you can probably guess where this is heading: residents' nerves won't tolerate constant rumbling forever.

A new gate to the city, and residents arrive by car 🚗

The city gate used to be a modest, lopsided arrow. Now it looks like an entrance: stone gate pillars, a wooden beam, a hanging welcome sign, and lanterns that glow at night. Outside the gate there's now a road that fades away the further you get from the play area – a clear hint of which direction people come from.

And the best part: new residents no longer teleport into their homes. When someone moves to the city, they drive in by car from outside, through the gate, straight to their new front door. A small thing, but it makes the city feel far more alive – people come from somewhere.

The city looks better now 🌳

A big part of this update is pure eye candy.

Parks were properly redone: layered conifers and deciduous trees, stone-tile paths with benches and bins, dense multicoloured flowerbeds with stone edging, and a pond with ripples, reflections, lilies, reeds, and sometimes there's even a duck on the pond. Each park tile now has several internal layouts, so two identical-looking tiles rarely land side by side.

The daycare traded its grey box for a cheerful little cottage: pink walls, a red gable roof, flower boxes and a striped awning, and a yard with a slide, swings, a sandbox and a spring rocker. When there are children present, the kids play in the yard – in the evening they go home and the yard falls quiet.

The high school got its forgotten entrance doors (a recessed double door in front of the glass lobby), a unified tiled yard and a smaller flag moved to the side – and its window lights no longer blow out into a white blob through the building.

Apartment blocks also no longer fill the tile edge to edge: there's now a narrow strip of yard around each building (some grass, some paved), so neighbouring blocks stand apart instead of forming one seamless wall. The city looks airier.

A clearer UI

The interface got a tidy-up too. The build tools moved to the bottom-left corner – click the 🏗️ button and the bar rolls open, click again and it closes. The View and Filters buttons sit above it, and the mouse wheel zooms the map. More room for the city.

The resident card, or whatever we should call it now, is clearer now: current status, location, three wellbeing meters (mood, health, resilience) and the core facts in two columns, all visible at once. Fear, luck, dream, car, health traits and life log are one click away, and the card no longer spills off the screen. Workplace and Home are clickable and open that building's card. The house info card got the same look: power, water and road shown clearly.

Small, but important

Finally, a bunch of fixes and extras that don't make a headline alone but together you feel:

• Residents no longer switch jobs throughout the day (to the factory in the morning, the shop at noon…). A workplace now stays the same until there's a real reason to change – and as a bonus, the life log no longer clogs up with "got a job / became unemployed" entries.
• The life log and ailments now show in English too – including event locations and hundreds of silly accident names.
• A new chat command, /give. Type e.g. /give 1000 in chat and 1000 € moves from your own balance to the other player. Handy when your friend's coffers are empty and the city desperately needs, say, a water pump. I used the € sign here even though the game says kr (credits, or maybe even crowns?) – I haven't decided yet what the game's currency is, so let's be messy for a moment. Money is money all the same.

What's next?

This update didn't add one new big piece – it made the existing game feel better. Those are exactly the updates you need now and then: when you've built a lot quickly, it's good to stop and polish.

Noise is still waiting for its effect on mood, water and fire are now both real threats, and the city looks better than ever. Next, the gaze turns forward again – but before that, it's worth taking a spin to see what your own town looks like after this update.

And if you spot a resident driving through the gate to their new home: welcome the new townsfolk to their new home, and to the whole city. 🚗