Images From SimCity V Leaked, Includes Multiplayer

A user over at the NeoGAF forums posted a number of screens earlier today, supposedly all from a new SimCity title, almost a week ahead of EA’s livestreamed GDC conference. User Cjdamon042 posted seven screenshots, all of cityscapes rendering in posh, stylized graphics reminiscent of the SimCity style.

Not even half an hour later, user judhudson posted a translation of an article on SimCity V from the German magazine Gamestar. It’s very loosely translated but offers a few key details such as a new graphics engine supposedly called “Glassbox” which allows the player to view the entire city at once and also zoom in enough to read the signs of a store. The game will also feature upgradeable and customizable buildings.

Citizens will also be much more visible than before and will be visually active in the city in every way from commuting to work, to protesting your incompetencies, to begging for changes in parks when they lack jobs.

Most interestingly, there will be an included multiplayer mode in which your city can be directly influenced by other players’ cities. You can concentrate your city’s production in coal, for example, and then sell it off to other players. Even in solo mode, the price of commodities can be influenced by online player markets.

The game will supposedly take at least another year’s worth of development.