Cities Skylines Cheats: Full List And Developer UI

You can’t have a city builder without some fun, and thankfully Colossal Order have realised that and baked some Cities Skylines cheats natively into the game. While a lot of the fun of city building games is found in slowly building up your city, managing every aspect of the Cities Skylines process, it can be nice to allow yourself to go completely off the rails every once in a while. So, if you’re wondering what Cities Skylines cheats are available to you, then make sure to carry on reading.

• Running into the Cities Skylines not enough goods to sell problem? Check out our guide for some handy solutions.

How To Enable Cities Skylines Cheats

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All you need to do to enable or unlock Cities Skylines cheats is turn them on in the content manager section of the main menu. Instead of inputting them in a cheat box in every new save, the cheats act almost like built-in mods from the developer that can just be turned on and off at will. 

They are grouped in with any other mods you have downloaded, but an easy way to find all the cheats if you want to turn any on or off is to sort by author, as the cheats themselves will be the only ones without an actual creator so will sit at the top.

Cities Skylines Cheats List

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There are currently five available Cities Skylines cheats to enable, and they are as follows:

• Hard Mode
• Unlimited Money
• Unlimited Oil and Ore
• Unlimited Soil
• Unlock All

There is no restriction on how many of these you can have on at any one time, so you could enable them all and enjoy an entirely restricted gameplay experience if you wanted. One thing to note is that enabling any of the cheats does disable the ability to earn achievements or trophies, but there is a Steam Workshop mod to circumvent this, if you want to fully embrace the cheating lifestyle.

Hard Mode

The Cities Skylines hard mode cheat is the one selection that actually has a negative effect on your experience. If you’re a bit bored with the standard city building experience, and want a bit more of a challenge, then hard mode is definitely for you. If you’re wondering what the hard mode actually does though, it enables the following:

• Building and maintenance cost is increased by 25%
• Relocation costs are increased
• Building destruction only gives you half the normal amount back
• RCI demand has been reduced
• Slower level up process for buildings

Unlimited Money

What reputable cheats selection does not have an unlimited money option? This is incredibly self-explanatory though, as enabling this mod will not drain any funds, and you can build to your heart’s content.

Unlimited Oil and Ore

Acting in a similar function to the unlimited money cheat, unlimited oil and ore prevents the drain of any oil and ore resources in your city. In the vanilla game, any natural resources would eventually be consumed by industry over time, but with this enabled you can extract the earth for as long as possible.

Unlimited Soil

Enabling this mod removes the cost from any landscaping activities you are able to undertake. This includes terraforming and planting trees or any natural items. This is a very handy mod to have on that doesn’t induce too many game-altering mechanics, allowing you to mould your city to suit your needs without having to worry too much about funds.

Unlock All

If you were to play the game without this cheat, you would have to gradually increase your population and complete specific tasks in order to continually unlock various items and services for your city. However, enabling the 'unlock all' cheat gives you access to every single item at the start of the game, so this is the perfect mod to combine with unlimited money if you’re after a purely creative sandbox experience.

How To Enable The Cities Skylines Developer UI

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If the previous cheats just aren’t quite enough, and you’re after more control over your city, then the Cities Skylines developer UI might be more up your street. It gives you an increased amount of power over things like your money balance, unlocks, and building progression, so can be handy if you want to slowly tweak specific things without going the whole way.

To unlock the Cities Skylines developer UI, navigate to your Steam launch options by right-clicking on the game and selecting properties, and then the general tab. Enter -enable-dev-ui into the launch options, and the developer UI should be active next time you launch the game.

If you ever want to turn it off again, all you need to do is remove this line from your launch options and it will be removed. You do need to be careful to not tamper too far though, and remember to save frequently, as pushing the game too much is liable to cause crashes.

So, that rounds off our list of the Cities Skylines cheats, letting you know how to enable them and what each one does. If you’re interested more in mods after tinkering with cheats, then don’t miss our Cities Skylines first person mod guide.