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"If there's an issue, it should be visible in the world," game director Lasse Liljedahl tells me. "Everything that you need to worry about or manage is something you should see while zooming in and zooming out and not digging deep in statistics or information screens. That's the goal."

Liljedahl says if crime is high, you will see robberies in the world and your Lego police force chasing down the criminals. If there are fires, trucks will be dispatched from the nearest depot, or a helicopter will fly over the blaze and drench it with water. "Contrary to Cities: Skylines, [where] you can have a lot of underlying systems that are indirect with their consequences," Liljedahl explains. "In this game, we feel that it should be evident in the end."

Being Lego, though, Iceflake have to be careful about how they show all this, producer Joanna Ronkanen tells me. "Crime happens in real cities, people get sick, there's fires, and everything like that. It made sense to have these features, but with the Lego brand being a family friendly brand then we did have to have a look at how we visualise this."

The team have drawn from the recent Lego movies to find the tone. "We try to incorporate that Lego humour," Ronkanen says, giving the example of the fireman in the trailer who's not focused on putting out the flames, instead they're toasting a hotdog "This is mainly a game for adults – because of the complexity – but it should be something that your kids can watch at the same time when you play," Liljedahl adds. "So there's nothing that would be improper for them to see."

"We have to make sure that it's all family friendly," Ronkanen says. "That's the number one thing."

However, there are still societal problems the team haven't worked out how to show. While Lego Skylines has been built to be accessible, it does still feature many of the same systems you find in the original game. Residents need jobs and places to spend their earnings, white collar workplaces need an educated population to hire from, and if you don't build the infrastructure to get people into the workplace then you will see the consequences play out on your city's streets.

I asked the developers how they planned to convey rising homelessness to players. And, to their credit, they both recognise and aren't shying away from the challenge. "It's not where we want it to be yet," Ronkanen admits, "but we've been talking about it. We're trying to make sure that it is visualised so you can see what's happening without it being dark or anything because it's family friendly."

One idea Ronkanen suggests is having a minifig walking down the street "with a cell phone in his hand because they're looking for apartment listings", but how clearly would that actually communicate what was happening to a player? Ronkanen also suggests homeless minifigs could be carrying signs saying 'house wanted'. In that way it would be similar to disgruntled rioting civilians in Anno 1800.

I played Lego Skylines for 40 minutes or so at Gamescom and really enjoyed myself. In part because, as Liljedahl and Ronkanen say, it is a proper citybuilder. It has all of the systems I would expect from a Cities: Skylines or an Anno game, but it is dressed up in the colourful, charming aesthetic of Lego.

Though, Lego Skylines is also more than just those games in Lego's painted on clothing: where some systems have been simplified compared to Cities: Skylines, others have been made more complex. The demands on you are similar, but your attention is called for in different places. For instance, to connect your buildings to the power grid you don't need to place any pylons, you only need to ensure a road is touching both the utility station and the building you want it to power – no matter how far away the two are from one another. But while that system is simpler, there is now a much more involved set of tools for beautifying your neighbourhoods and business districts, an effort that's rewarded with increased happiness and output from your citizens. It pays to take the time to work out what your residents want near their homes, be it swings for the children or a park bench for bird watching.

I don't know what homelessness, joblessness, and sickness should look like in a Lego game – there are certainly a million ways to do it badly – but they're only problems that need to be solved because of Iceflake Studios' aim to build both a fully-featured citybuilder and one that better communicates what is happening in your city. Two goals that should make the game better for the attempt.