Cities: Skylines II Park Adventures is the first original expansion for Iceflake Studios’ city builder, and it arrives on December 2, 2026, priced at $19.99. The expansion turns your city into a destination, with zoos, amusement parks and nature reserves to build, five new maps to play on, and more than 100 new assets to fill them with. Better still, a free Seasonal Shift update is out today, November 10, giving the base game proper seasons for the first time, and the whole game will be free to play on Steam from November 12 to 16.
Park Adventures is a significant moment for Cities: Skylines II. The game launched in 2023 to a mixed reception, with players praising its ambition and criticising its performance and missing features, and Iceflake and Paradox have spent the time since rebuilding, fixing and expanding it. This is the studio’s first expansion built from scratch for the sequel, rather than a port of a Cities: Skylines idea, and it is aimed squarely at the players who have stuck with the game and want new reasons to keep building.
Cities: Skylines II Park Adventures adds zoos, theme parks and nature reserves
The heart of Cities: Skylines II Park Adventures is the park itself. The expansion adds three kinds of park for players to build and manage: zoos, amusement parks and nature reserves, each with its own buildings, staff and visitors to look after. Zoos come with animal habitats and signature buildings such as the Panda Pavilion, the Shark Tunnel and the Dolphin Stadium, and they are home to pandas, dolphins, sharks, monkeys, penguins, deer, foxes, rabbits and squirrels. Amusement parks bring rides and attractions, while nature reserves let you set aside wild spaces inside a busy city.
Building those parks is meant to be a creative exercise, not just a menu choice. The expansion includes new staff members to hire, custom fences, paths and gates to lay out, and a wide range of decorative elements, so a zoo in one city can look and feel completely different from a zoo in another. With more than 100 assets in the pack, there is plenty to work with, whether you want a neat, tidy city park or a sprawling attraction that takes over a whole district.
Five new maps in Cities: Skylines II Park Adventures
Cities: Skylines II Park Adventures also adds five new maps, each designed to show off the new parks in a different setting. Beach Paradise, Oasis, Riverside Valley, Sanctuary Shores and Terraced Gardens each offer a different landscape to build on, from coastal resorts to desert oases and river valleys, and each one should suit a different kind of city. For players who have already built on every map in the base game, five fresh starting points is a meaningful addition on its own.
The maps matter because city builders live or die on variety. A new map is not just a new backdrop, it is a new set of problems to solve: where the water goes, where the hills are, how the roads should flow, and where a zoo or a theme park fits best. The five maps in Park Adventures are built around that idea, giving players room to experiment with the new park tools in places that were designed for them.
Seasonal Shift update is free today in Cities: Skylines II
Alongside the expansion announcement, Iceflake has released the Seasonal Shift update for free today, and it is available to every Cities: Skylines II player, whether or not they buy Park Adventures. Seasonal Shift adds proper seasons to the game, with summer warmth, autumn foliage and winter snowfall, and the difference is visible everywhere: rain-soaked streets, leaves changing colour in the parks, and snow settling over the city in winter.
Seasons have been one of the most requested features for the sequel, and their arrival should make the game feel more alive. A city in winter should look and feel different from the same city in summer, and Seasonal Shift is a step towards that. It also ties neatly into Park Adventures, since a zoo or a nature reserve in the snow is a very different sight from the same park in high summer, and the free update means every player can see the change today, ahead of the expansion’s December 2 launch.
Cities: Skylines II free to play on Steam from November 12 to 16
If you have never played Cities: Skylines II, this week is a good time to try it. The game will be free to play on Steam from November 12 to 16, giving curious players a full weekend to build a city, try the new seasons and see how the game has changed since launch. It is a well-timed trial, landing just as Seasonal Shift arrives and a few weeks before Park Adventures, and it should give new players a fair sense of what the game is now.
For existing players, the message is simpler: the game you own is about to get a free seasonal overhaul, and a substantial expansion is three weeks away. That is the kind of one-two punch that city builder fans have been waiting for, and it comes at a time when the management simulation genre is having a strong week, with Football Manager 27 Is OUT NOW — Every Platform, Game Pass Day One and a Record-Breaking Free Play also arriving for players who like to run things.
How much is Cities: Skylines II Park Adventures?
Cities: Skylines II Park Adventures costs $19.99, or £16.99 / €19.99, and it launches on December 2, 2026, on Steam and the Microsoft Store for PC. There is no console version announced, and the expansion is a PC release, so players on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S will have to wait and see whether the sequel ever makes the jump to consoles.
At $19.99, the expansion is priced in line with the larger expansions for the original Cities: Skylines, and the combination of three park types, five maps and more than 100 assets should give players plenty to do. Whether it is worth that price will depend on how much you enjoy the park-building itself, but for players who have already spent dozens or hundreds of hours in the game, a new system to master is exactly what keeps a city builder fresh.
Why Park Adventures matters for Cities: Skylines II
Park Adventures matters because it is the first test of what Iceflake can do with Cities: Skylines II now that the game has stabilised. The original Cities: Skylines was supported for years with expansions that added new systems, from parks and industries to airports and hotels, and the sequel needs the same kind of long-term support to reach its potential. A park expansion is a sensible place to start: parks are one of the most popular parts of any city builder, they are visible in every screenshot, and they give players a creative outlet that is different from laying roads and zoning districts.
It also matters because of the timing. The free Seasonal Shift update today, the free-to-play weekend on Steam from November 12 to 16, and the expansion on December 2 form a clear run of good news for the game, and they should bring lapsed players back to see how it has changed. If Park Adventures lands well, it will be a strong sign that the sequel is finally finding its footing, and that Iceflake has more expansions to come. For now, though, the message for city builders is simple: your parks are about to get a lot more interesting, and your city is about to get a lot more seasonal.
Source: Iceflake Studios / Paradox Interactive, via Games Press. For more PC releases this week, see Beholder 4 Revealed — The Dystopian Landlord Series Returns for Its 10th Anniversary and A Little to the Left Just Got a Little More Left — Switch 2 Edition Is Out Now at 120fps.
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