Chirper might actually be useful for keeping track of your citizens' 'Lifepaths' in Cities: Skylines 2

Recent dev diary announcements have given me hope for the future of Chirper in Cities: Skylines 2, and well as a method (and an excuse, as if I needed one) to creep on my citizens' rich lives.

It had been hinted previously that any machinations made around your busting metropolis would affect your citizens—often referred to as Cims—in some super intricate ways. Keeping the standard necessities like city services running will ensure your Cims will be able to get to school, or the cemetery after a particularly gnarly road traffic collision, and taxing them into oblivion could see them becoming homeless only for you to find them mooching around in your city’s parks. 

Developer Colossal Order has revealed that Cims around your city will live impressively full lives, in fact, with life events such as “graduating from a school, finding a spouse, landing a new job, and moving to a new home”. But the question remained, how were we going to keep track of all this life your Cims are living? Well, that’s where good ‘ol Chirper comes in.

As the most recent dev diary explains, "You can keep an eye on these events through the Lifepath Journal by following a citizen. This is done by selecting the citizen and clicking the Follow button, adding them to the list of Followed Citizens found on the right side of the screen right below Chirper."

So, just like the Twitter (or X) of real life, you’ll be able to follow the citizens of your choice, keeping track of their happiness, and peeping whether your choices as a benevolent Mayor have helped them to achieve their hopes and dreams.

(Image credit: Colossal Order)

"The Lifepath Journal records everything from the added citizens from the moment they are followed," the dev diary continues. "The journal entry lists their name, home address, current occupation, Happiness, and other information as well as their Chirper feed where they tell the whole world what is going on in their daily life."

And, if you follow a citizen from birth all the way through to death, you’ll end up bagging the "You Little Stalker" achievement. Not the most healthy of badges to wear on your public Steam profile, but hey, at least you can use the data here to understand how your choices are messing with your Cims happiness.

That's something you can track by clicking on Cims, as well as a handy tooltip to help you decipher what's missing from their life so you can improve it!

(Image credit: Colossal Order)

Chirper looks like a much stronger tool for understanding the needs of your citizens than the previous version, too: "Its functionality has been expanded and integrated more into the core gameplay as citizens voice their happiness and frustration about the various things happening in the city. The chirps relate to actual events and looking at the ‘likes’, you can see just how important the subject matter is to the chirp sender and other citizens." 

So not only can you keep track of certain citizens without losing them, and make sure you’re there looking down with omniscient reverie at your Cims in their most intimate and triumphant moments, you can also like their posts on Chirper—"No way, guys, God liked my post!"

Maybe you can start up a car manufacturing industry, and rename the CEO Elon Musk, and watch as Chirper slowly goes down the tube after being renamed to Y, later in the game (just to clarify, the latter is not canon). 

Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Screw sports, Katie would rather watch Intel, AMD and Nvidia go at it. Having been obsessed with computers and graphics for three long decades, she took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni, and has been rambling about games, tech and science—rather sarcastically—for four years since. She can be found admiring technological advancements, scrambling for scintillating Raspberry Pi projects, preaching cybersecurity awareness, sighing over semiconductors, and gawping at the latest GPU upgrades. Right now she's waiting patiently for her chance to upload her consciousness into the cloud.

Read more
A cloaked man ponders an offering of gold in a large chest in Streets of Fortuna.
This ancient city sim constantly simulates 1000 NPCs in a clockwork murder sandbox where you can poison someone's drink and leave 'confident that you've pulled off the perfect crime'
Inzoi -fictional AR Company rep Henri whispers behind his hand conspiratorially
Inzoi won't stop promising new features even though its launch is only 2 months away
Inzoi - A Zoi stands in a neon yellow and pink room wearing polkadot pajamas looking shocked
Inzoi's wild karma system can turn cities into literal ghost towns that you have to cleanse, game director says: 'If too many ghosts appear in the city, new Zois cannot be born'
A citizen of a city
A lot is going on for Cities: Skylines' 10th anniversary—from freebies to new creator packs—but there's still a big ol' elephant in the room
Inzoi -fictional AR Company rep Henri whispers behind his hand conspiratorially
'It was truly eye-opening to realize just how many people deeply love this type of game': Inzoi director hopes his life sim will 'bring comfort to many players' lives'
Birds in a garden in Birdfull
This cosy birdwatching idle game has me leaving behind my binoculars and enjoying the hobby from the comfort of my desktop
Latest in Sim
PowerWash Simulator 2 screenshots
'More evolution than revolution': PowerWash Simulator 2 is coming late 2025, and it's bringing online multiplayer and split-screen co-op with it
A child stands on top of a dinosaur exhibit, hugging the nose of a dinosaur skull.
As a real life museum employee, I'm a bit confused by the amount of pirate ghosts in Two Point Museum—but it's not going to stop me trying to make the most realistic exhibits I can
A citizen of a city
A lot is going on for Cities: Skylines' 10th anniversary—from freebies to new creator packs—but there's still a big ol' elephant in the room
Staring eyes in a face covered in oil
Death Stranding 2's PS5 release date is in June, let's hope it doesn't take 8 months to hit PC this time
Cities: Skylines 2 screenshot - street level at night
Cities: Skylines 2's asset editor remains a distant dream: Colossal Order is still working on it but says it's 'proven more technically challenging than initially anticipated'
Town in Tales of Seikyu with two townsfolk sat on the stairs
Tales of Seikyu is just your regular farming simulator, apart from the fact I've got shapeshifting abilities and I'm engaged to a pretty persistent kappa
Latest in News
Three sheep with big guns in Palworld.
It was 'super popular to hate Palworld' after launch, says community manager: 'A lot of companies might crumble under the threats, under the pressure'
Palworld Ancient Civilization Parts - Grizzbolt with a minigun
'It was a very depressing day': Palworld community manager reveals studio's reaction to Nintendo lawsuit
CS 1.6 remade in CS: Legacy.
A gorgeous ground-up remake of Counter-Strike 1.6 is on its way to Steam, and one of the game's original creators says 'it really gives me old vibes'
Portal P3 pinball table
There's a new Portal game and it costs $12,500
MrBeast posing in front of a stack of cashing, promoting Beast Games season 2
Beast Games opens casting for season 2: MrBeast lost a ton of money on season 1 but apparently not enough that he won't do it again
Ark: Lost Colony teaser still.
Ark 2 is still on: The next Ark expansion 'leads into the events of Ark 2,' says Studio Wildcard