Namco Bandai Partners and Monte Cristo today announce that the demo of the highly anticipated next-generation city building game CITIES XL is now live.   The demo period will run for the month of September and will give players the chance to build a city of up to 22,000 citizens on a persistent planet (the full version of the game lets you create megalopolises of millions of citizens).
 
Players will be able to build their city across three available maps (the full version of the game will include 25 maps for solo mode and 50 for the Planet Offer). Inter-city trading, the chat function and a limited avatar builder have all been included, along with the possibility to visit Capital City, a town that offers an example of what can be created with Cities XL.
 
Players can also create their own city journals and start a new city as often as they wish for the duration of the demo period. Developed by Monte Cristo Games, CITIES XL expands upon all the features that make city builders fun and interesting, while also letting players take their game online, as they interact with others in a persistent online environment.
 
Realism will be pushed to the limit with cities that are bigger, more realistic and more sophisticated than ever before. Cities XL will launch exclusively for PC in October 2009.