Little Kitty, Big City
Little Kitty, Big City
Game
Game2011
Cities in Motion
Developer Colossal Order
Cities in Motion is a business simulation game developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive. The goal of the game is to implement and improve the public transport system in various cities. This can be achieved by building lines for buses, trams, metro trains, waterbuses, and helicopters. It was released for Microsoft Windows in 2011. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
197 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Lemmy, Mastodon) · newest Sep 27, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
62
Fresh
116 positive · 70 negative
95% range 55–69%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 116 | 70 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Lemmy * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
11 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
Steam's own rating
Mostly Positive
842 of 1,096 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 197 · most liked firstA friend had recommended this game to me, so presumably there are some people for whom it is OK. But I wish I had not bought it. I got it significantly cheaper, along with lots of expansions, but these are useless to me since twenty years of playing computer games, a PhD in mathematics and a great motivation to play precisely this game with its great setting and beautiful graphics are clearly not enough to learn who to operate it. It also takes the kind of patience that is normally required to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There's two ways to look at Cities in Motion. I could review the game as it was at the time, or the game as it is now. Now I don't mean patches but rather the landscape as well. The thing is in neither way can I recommend this game, It's not a "OMG this game is awful" game, but it falls into a common problem of games. Ultra complex game/systems that don't properly inform the player what they are doing or what is going wrong. The fact is Cities in Motion might be as complex as a game…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I used to play this game day and night because it's too addictive. And when I saw it's available in Steam and is in discount, I don't hesitate buying it and complete it for a second time. To be honest, after CIM2 released, CIM1 is not that attractive as CIM2 is significantly better. However, if you don't like a lot of micromanagement and just want to have some fun, CIM1 is not a bad choice. It already provides a lot of features to build your own transportation system. The only thing I dislike…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Cities in Motion could be a great game. Unfortunately there are numerous glaring flaws in the game which even after a couple of years have not been fixed. The most glaring issue is the bizarre way that implementing a mass transit system in your city is a recipe for gridlock. Yes, that's right - getting people to ditch their cars for public transport results in massive traffic jams. Very counter-intuitive. The reason for this is quite simply incompetence on the part of the programmers, as there…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun, simple and easy to learn. You've got to play for a while to get your systems running but once thats done you can sit back and relax. Just don't listen to those with half an hour on record. Take it from me, with my 571 hours! ;-)
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Paradox is a terrible company supporting woke culture and expensive DLC. Forums are full of woke moderators and if you say anything against the woke narrative, you'll cop a ban.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What we saw after paradox pooped the bed again recently 2024-04-18 This is the final straw for me with paradox games. It pains me deeply to say that as a fan of paradox developed games, and published games going back to being a kid playing HOi1. HOI1 was janky poop, but you could see the potential, you could see the love and attention, you could see paradox sticking with it. The last 2 decades have seen you guys lose your path, i loved this star trek game, and i just had thought, ok paradox…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Figured out how to play Cities in Motion. 1. Pull out ALL da loans. 2. Establish a metro system ASAP. 3. Make many bus lines towards metro stops. 4. Ride out your ♥♥♥♥ huge loan payments. 5. Profit.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Couldn't play game after purchasing the biggest bundle with all the dlc. Just gets stuck in the loading screen for ever. Predator G9 gtx 1060 6 gb intel hk 7700
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Possibly the best city transport builder, only could ask that the AI was smarter. But it's a brilliant game
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →CiM is a transport management simulator that can be fun if you don't get too hung up about its weirdly uneven quality and quirks. In some aspects it's great, in others it can be quite frustrating. First of all the scope is strictly on public transit in a city. There is no cargo shipping, no industry chains. This allows for a more detailed simulation of passenger traffic. There are several different types of citizen classes and every single citizen has a separately simulated set of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I started off playing Cities In Motion 2 because a friend had it but, now that I've seen it on sale I decided to try it out and it's quite good if not, even better than Cities in Motion 2 when it comes to Transit building simulation. Tons of fun spending time building out and watching cities.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Had promise but it just fell flat. Was enjoyable, but had no real long-term playability.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →When I first settled into the game, I expected something more similar to Cities: Skylines, or perhaps any of the myriad of XYZ Tycoon games from my childhood. It is definitely not either of those things. The game's sole focus is transportation. While a variety of methods exist, you really don't need to use most of them - except to complete specific tasks, which reward you with less money than you think they should. I've spent ~13 hours on the game thus far, and I'd say ~10 of those were spent…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Still a great game 10 years after release :D honestly prefer this one to CiM2
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Good premise but poorly executed. You create transportation routes using different modes of transportation (bus, tram, metro/subway, waterbus, helicopter), you designate stops/stations, you manage the vehicle type and number of vehicles on that route, and you set the wages of the employees. One flaw is that it rewards shorter transportation routes. You collect passenger fares but the passenger only pays one time for the entire route. So if you have a long route, you could transport the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you like Cities:Skyline but ever thought to yourself, "I'd like this game so much better if the city was already built and I just managed traffic," congratulations you found your game. It's not a bad game, everything is sets out to do is does well, but at the end of the day, I'd rather play Cities: Skyline.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you like Transport Tycoon or even its open code version, OpenTTD, you will love this game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really tried to like this game. It started out fine. Initially, it feels like a classic transport tycoon game. But there are some glaring issues. There are no bus bays, so taking passengers halts the traffic. The problem is made worse by cars not switching lanes when a lane is blocked. Early buses are not worth the investment. They barely earn any money. In the first campaign, it's pointless to build bus lanes. Even tram lines are a waste of time. Wait until you get metro lines. Those will…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →After a long absense from this game, tried to start playing only to find it crashes when trying to play the tutorial on a modern Win 10 machine. If Collasal Order can't keep it permantly playable, I can't recommend!
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Make a bus route.. Get people to use it.. People enjoy your bus service.. Add more busses.. More people uses the route.. Add more busses.. More people uses the route.. Add more busses.. Boom! Congested roads because of all the busses, 100s of passengers at each stop getting pissed that the bus is late.... Also a lot of lag..
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I love transport games, and this is a winner for me. I really enjoyed setting up routes, finding ways to optimize my system & coverage, and solving for lines of unhappy people with long wait times. It took a little getting used to at first. But once you know the mechanics, it is a lot of fun. Time flies by. I bought the complete package, and have really only played a short ways through the campaign because I complete every objective it suggests, and often keep playing a city well past when…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Downvoting before attempting a refund, lest they spent all my money partying on Malta #GangUp #MobDown #PoorCEO
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Same! I could not play it for four days (I was in college), put it down, and did not touch it again. $60 down the drain. Cities in Motion 2 was literally "our previous game, but on Unity so we can get ready to build a full city builder" and then Paradox was like 'lmao we will never beat SimCity'
unlabelledView post →Depends on the genre: RPGs: Strong writing and/or world building is a must. I prefer when both are done well, but just strong world building with ok writing works too (more often than not writing us weaker). For me the point of an RPG is to explore a world and try different playstyles, factions and narrative. I enjoy reading in-game texts that provide lore backgrounds, but also minor clues and subtle opportunities to define your strategy. Strategy/Tycoon/City-builder: Story and writing…
unlabelledView post →Better than CiM2
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is an interesting game, which I have just come back to for the first time in about 5 years.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I played this game for a bit some time ago but now it won't load anymore. From what I've seen, a lot of people are having the same issue.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very confusing game. First try: playing the tutorial, but suddenly the tutorial guy disappears and is nowhere to be found ever again. I tried making some bus lines myself, but couldn't do it (apparently it's turned off in the tutorial). Second try: tutorial again, this time sticking closely to the help screen. But again, the guy just vanishes. Third try: don't care about the tutorial anymore, so I decided to just start a campaign. Doing some mission requests for some German guy. Then one…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game really hooked me. Now I play mostly Cities: Skylines by the same developer, but every time I hear a familiar sound effect from CiM, or the Cities in Motion theme comes on the Skylines radio, I smile. It's a really unique, fun game that's easy to learn and progress in through its scenarios.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As someone who has had this game for a really long time, and keeps coming back to it, I can say it has a lot to like about it. Yes it's old. It's a CPU hungry game so at times the performance isn't great. And the modding community is sadly no where near as active as it once was. But on the whole it's still a really good game even today. As is the case with most games it is better with mods. Thankfully there are still a healthy amount of mods available that still work if you know where to find…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →When you play everything 20 times over (normal & hard), doing what is requested of you in a different way every time, trying your best to be sufficient, and some how always failing or hardly scraping by every time... I think you have a bit of a problem. Maybe I'm playing the game wrong. - Passengers on your transport line [#] are unhappy x 5000 - Buses become obsolete very quickly. - Trams are obsolete before you build them. - Metros are the only thing worth building and are very expensive. -…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Decent game but is tedious and becomes tiresome. Some of the transport methods are useless. You pretty much need to take out a fat loan early in the game to install a metro line if you ever want to be profitable. Recommend if its on sale but not at full price.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a great game and the only one in it's genre. If you like simulate the public transportation system , it's your vibe. You have a lot of different cities: Helsinki, Munich,Berlin..., and you can even create your own unique city and play with it. My favourite part of the game is when you give life to some place where before were empty, but in few months now you have 400+ people waiting for the bus/metro to come! Definitely buy it...
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I would argue even with the patient gamer approach (which I follow for non-indie releases) you have a lot of drawbacks inherent to the Paradox DLC model with respect to gameplay and game design. - There is a strong incentive to create DLC gameplay that is not fundamentally integrated with the rest of the game. It is in your financial interest to compartmentalize improvements, limit their scope and avoid innovative gameplay updates. - There is no incentive to work on refining less…
unlabelledView post →Cities in Motion is a focused and methodical transportation management simulation developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive that places the player squarely in the role of an urban transit planner rather than a traditional city builder. Instead of asking you to manage zoning, taxes, or population happiness in a broad sense, the game narrows its scope to one essential system: how people move through a city. This deliberate focus gives Cities in Motion a distinctive…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Too much randomly crashes during game. Tokyo, Paris, St. Petersburg completely unstable and unplayable. Bugs not repaired from 2011. Tested by me on few different PCs (Win10/Win7/GTX1060/GTX760/i7/i5). Always the same issue of random crashes with no solution.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I actually prefer this to CiM2
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →20$ for a ♥♥♥♥ game that came out in 2011 and looks like its from 1998, NO. -crashed well i was trying to play. -try and sell you dlc got it for less then $0.25, would refund if i could 0/10
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Its not too bad, theres not much to do ):
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game needs a lot more improvement in basic functionality. Building metro train stations and tracks is not fully functional. Neither there is a guide to help doing it. I only realized this after playing for sometime. So unable to get a refund for the game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TERRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DON'T BUY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! regreted buying this.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you want a city simulator mocking your face spawning buildings on your tram tracks when you are deep in debt, or always have looked forward to finding and resolving traffic jams caused by your own morons of drivers, Cities in Motion is the game for you!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Better than CiM 2, Still something i start from time to time to play.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A very good transport management game!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I must admit I struggled in the first 20 hours. Spent hours looking at tutorials and reading through forums. But it is not that difficult, really. All you need to do is build a metro line first, then keep adding lines to serve the metro and just keep growing. What kinda annoyed me was that the levels keep repeating. I dont mind playing the same level let's say two times in a different era. But 3-4 times? Same level...that is too much. I would prefer more maps instead.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Stuck at loading screen with 100 fps 2% CPU usage 1% memory usage 21% disk usage
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →First I did not recommend this game. Then I thought: "So many people like this game, I should give it one more time". And indeed, after several hours, I find the game very decent. However, note the following points: - compared to the tutorial, the first campaign "Berlin" is very difficult - I watched a video on the first 20 minutes of Berlin to know how things are handled - do not try to build a transport network like the ones you know from real world, rather you have to connect certain areas…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There's some tricks i found to make money in this game. It's not the issue of making the most efficient line but forcing the people to ride the money maker ride in this game, the train. Just think of the bus and etc as workhorse to get people to your train station. Then the money will start rolling in. Basically, pick them up from their homes using their bus. Dump them all to the tram station. Then the tram will take them to the train station. I never bother with advertisement at all just by…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is really nice game, i advice everybody who likes game like Railroadtycoon etc. Better than Cities in Motion 2 and Train Fever !!!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Cool theme, but very low FPS. The game runs at a 5-10FPS. It's pretty bad for such an old game. Even SimCity runs better.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I liked this game earlier so I'm glad that it's available in steam as well
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A really nice game for all of you that wanted to build a public transportion system, but there are some annoying aspects of the game that mods can fix. With mods this game is really good and it's much better than the sequel.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Trains jam for no particular reason, busses permanently stuck in traffic.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It does not start on Linux and Valve cannot help.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →its some eurojank for sure. but this game makes me so happy. it feels nothing like all the other city building games out there. this game just has this feel, this magic to it that i cant put my finger on.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →After 50 hours I cannot recommend this game. It is difficult to have enough passengers to make the company grow. Money spent is difficult to recover and you can NEVER cover an entire city, it is only a side or better said a quarter of the city. Forget about building metro or railways there is never money for that even in the easy mode. When I played it in the beginning I liked the concept of graphics but it can't be realistic when we take numbers. It just feels like a waist of time.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Far better than CIM 2 as the interaction is smoother and although you loose the 3D effect, the game play I beleive is better
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very chill game, simple, straightforward. The campaigns aren't really my thing but I can spend hour after hour in sandbox mode, just following individual characters as they go about their business in the city.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game seems to be good, but it's not. The capacity of the vehicles is weird. 10-20 people on a bus and a circa 30 people as maximum on a tram. How did the developers find these numbers? It doesn't seem legit. One thing is pretty easy regarding the game. Running out of money in the blink of an eye. It doesn't matter if you have successful lines with a lot of passengers and fully loaded vehicles. Buying another one or two or three etc. won't help despite the ticket price management for…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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