Upon launch in 2013, it suffered from network connection issues – a serious problem, given that the game required logging onto servers to be played. The most recent major game in the genre at that time was SimCity 2013, which was widely perceived by the community as being terrible. It was released on March 11, 2015, during a time when the city-building gamer community was somewhat dissatisfied with the range of games then available in their favourite genre. Cities: Skylines (hereafter referred to as C:S) is a city-building game made by Colossal Order, a game studio based in Finland, and published by Paradox Interactive, of grand strategy game ( Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 4) fame.

If you still don’t know what Cities: Skylines is, even almost five years after its initial release, I truly pity you. If you’re already experienced with this game, then I’ll hopefully be able to induce some reminiscences of not only the things that draw you back into this game time and again, but also the things that make you want to “quit to desktop” and uninstall the game, never to touch it for as long as you’re on this Earth (but always eventually failing). That’s why, ahead of Cities: Skylines’s fifth anniversary, I’m pleased to provide you readers with a guide to the best, the worst, and the ugliest aspects of this game. (Just one more round before bed… wait – it’s 6 am?) Plus, I’ve managed to find it even more addicting than Civilization V – which, as veterans know, might be the most common cause of accidental all-nighters. And indeed, by the end of the year, I had purchased the game and spent much time on it, working on my very first city.įour years and more than 1000 hours later (rookie hours, I know), I can happily announce that Cities: Skylines remains at the top of my list of favourite games for all time. So, when my friends introduced me to the game Cities: Skylines in the fall of 2015, I immediately knew that this would be the game for me. Perhaps it gave me a sense of escapism from reality or a sense of responsibility as a creator, an artist, or someone in charge or just because laying down those roads and building the neighbourhoods was simply addicting to my young, growing mind. Besides the standard games on Miniclip and Coolmath that shaped my pre-tween years, the first flash games that I played included indie efforts at imitating SimCity games: laying power cables, water pipes, and roads zoning residential, commercial, and industrial zones and designating special areas for parks and recreation.įor me, there was just something about building livable cities that had everything a city required. If I look deep enough within my house, I can probably find bundles of city maps, complete with streets, bridges, buildings, rivers – all drawn by my own hand.

I’ve always been a fan of urban planning and city-building games since I was a boy.

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