Well, developer Colossal Order may be able to answer that very question, for they are the creators of Cities in Motion 2, the sequel to the mass-transit simulator from 2011.
Mariina Hallikainen, CEO of Colossal Order Ltd, talked SPOnG through the next iteration of the Cities in Motion title. Like the previous game, Cities in Motion 2 (CiM2) puts the player in the role of a mass transit magnate with the aim of creating the ultimate transport system to the point where it encourages growth of the city.
The first change Mariina spoke to us of was the creation of dynamic cities that react to how the player develops their mass transit system. As more bus routes, trams and underground/subway routes are developed, the city expands around them, assuming they are placed in appropriate locations.
Another feature that Mariina boast about what the day and night cycles CiM2 will boast. This has an impact on the way players can schedule their transit system by altering the degrees of service available.
They can even shut them down completely to reduce the maintenance costs of the system, but at the expense of providing a robust service to the ever growing city.
The biggest change is the inclusion of multiplayer. This allows players to compete or co-operate with one another. This is something the fan base for the original game and its presence is most definitely a welcome one. The structure and form of these multiplayer modes were not expanded upon too much, but more will be revealed in due course.
While resources have been placed in creating a robust multiplayer mode, Colossal Order have not scrimped on the single player game. CiM will have both a campaign and a sandbox mode.
Campaign Mode has the player taking control of various mass transit systems that are in various states of success and failure and it is the players job to turn them into a fully functioning service.
The sandbox mode could be regarded as a kind of endless method of play, with the players managing a mass transit system within an ever growing city, provided they manage their system adequately of course!
CiM2 has been developed using the increasingly popular Unity engine that allows it to be easily ported between different formats.
In the case of CiM2, PC and Mac OS X formats will be supported from the off, when it arrives early in 2013. CiM2 seemed to be playing well from what I saw of it and we can only hope that added features will do much to improve an already winning formula for many.