Getting started
Skyline Architect is a tower you build in cross-section and keep running. You place floors, rooms and shafts; people arrive, ride the elevators, rent your units and pay the bills that keep the building alive. This chapter gets you from the main menu to a running game.
The main menu
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Continue | Loads your newest save (shown only when you have one). |
| Tutorial | First Tower: your first building, step by step. |
| New Game | The standard game on Quay Street, Port Calder. Rooms, height and tenants unlock as your building earns a better class. |
| New Sandbox | The same lot with everything unlocked from the start. |
| Scenarios… | Objectives against the clock. See Scenarios. |
| Mods… | Data-only content packs. See Mods. |
| Load Game… | Your saves. |
| Manual | This manual. |
Both starts give you $2,500,000 and an empty foundation on Quay Street Lot: 32 m wide, one basement level, piles 20 m deep.
What is on screen
- Top left: the property, its city and the mode (Standard, Sandbox or Scenario).
- Top centre: the clock (Day 3 · 14:20), the speed buttons, today's weather with tomorrow's forecast, and how many people are in and out of the building. Hover over the weather or the people count for details.
- Bottom centre: the status pill with your cash (red when negative), the building's class and reputation, and the build palette.
- Bottom right: the view controls: zoom, camera presets, overlays and the buttons that open the side panels. Every button has a tooltip with its keyboard shortcut.
- Right side: the panels you open (unit inspector, economy, leasing, facilities and more). When they do not all fit they become tabs.
Time and speed
One game second passes per simulation tick. The game can run at seven speeds:
| Speed | Key | A game day takes |
|---|---|---|
| Pause | Space | — |
| 1× | 1 | 60 real minutes |
| 2× | 2 | 30 minutes |
| 4× | 3 | 15 minutes |
| 10× | 4 | 6 minutes |
| 30× | 5 | 2 minutes |
| 60× | 6 | 1 minute |
The result is exactly the same at every speed. You can build while the game is paused. The day starts at 06:00, when the daily closing settles rent and costs (see Money).
Moving the camera
On a Mac:
- Scroll with two fingers to pan; pinch to zoom at the cursor. A mouse wheel zooms, and dragging with any button pans.
- W A S D or the arrow keys pan; Q/E (or -/=) zoom.
- ⌘1 Site Overview, ⌘2 Foundation, ⌘3 Detail Close-up, ⌘4 Skyline; ⌘0 resets the view.
- Click a room to open its inspector.
On an iPad, drag with one or two fingers to pan, pinch to zoom and tap a room to inspect it. The view controls at the bottom right replace the menus.
Zoom in far enough and rooms show their furniture and tenants' names; zoom out and the tower becomes a façade with lit windows at night.
Saving
- File ▸ Save (⌘S) saves to the quick-save slot; File ▸ Load Game… (⌘O) opens your saves, six to a page, where you can load or delete them.
- The game autosaves every two minutes when something changed, keeping the last three autosaves.
- Turn on iCloud Drive in the saves panel to use your saves on your other devices. When the same save changed on two devices, both versions are kept. Autosaves stay on the device.
On an iPad, the Save button in the view controls saves to the quick-save slot. The Main Menu button (three lines) brings back the main menu over your game, with Resume at the top; on a Mac use File ▸ Main Menu (⇧⌘M).
Text size
Text Size in the main menu (or View ▸ Text Size on a Mac) makes the panels, menus and the manual larger: Standard, Large, Larger or Largest. On an iPad, Standard follows the text size you chose in the iPad's settings.
Help while you play
- Tips appear the first time something happens: your first floor, your first tenant, your first night. Each tip shows once. Turn them off in the tip itself or in Help ▸ Turn Off Tips; Help ▸ Show All Tips Again brings them back.
- Help ▸ Skyline Architect Manual (⌘?) or the book button opens this manual. Use the search field to find a word in every chapter.