Game info

• Title Cities: Skylines
• Developer [Colossal Order]
• Publisher [Paradox Interactive]
• Year 2015
• Platform Playstation 5
• Genre Simulation

Build the city of your dreams: Plan road networks, bus lines and parks. Bring on a smog-filled industrial revolution or create a quiet beach town ideal for tourists powered by renewable energy. Build it your way! Multi-tiered and challenging simulation: Playing as the mayor of your city, you'll be faced with balancing essential requirements such as education, water, electricity, police, firefighting, healthcare and much more, along with your city's economy. Extensive local traffic simulation: Managing traffic and the needs of your citizens to work and play will require the use of several interactive transport systems. Districts and policies: Be more than just another city hall official! Create a car-free downtown area, assign free public transport to your waterfront, or ban pets in suburbia.

Player Select

I really love simulation games, particularly world-building ones where you’re in control to create a place of your dreams. I had seen this game pop in the Playstation sales a few times so that eventually it seemed inevitable I would have to give it a go. Obviously as a massive fan of The Sims, this is the right kind of area for me so I was looking forward to seeing how it developed.

It’s in the Game

The game starts you off with a plot of land and a couple of roads and gives you brief instructions on what to do. If I’m honest, I could have done with more hand-holding at the beginning. I did really like that you just dedicate an area a specific zone (residential, commercial, industrial) and then buildings and locations just start spawning in there. I’m not big on house-building or that close up design element, so to have the buildings take care of themselves was something of a relief.

But when it got to placing the water and electricity, I really didn’t know what was going on or what I was supposed to be doing, and ended up with a massive flood on one side, and a one-way straight to houses with no power on the other. I got a bit stuck then, so didn’t really end up playing for long enough to start unlocking more fun things, but I think ultimately I got a good feel for the game, and will revisit it (after some googling).

There’s a lot to it, by all accounts, once you start hitting those milestones and unlocking more interactivity - and I like that things bounce off each other and have an impact, eg. better educated people work harder and raise more money. I think it’s a really impressive simulation that has a lot to give, but you just have to give it some time and dedication to understand the nuts and bolts of what you’re doing.

Thoughts

It’s been surpassed by other world builders now, no doubt, including the sequel Cities: Skylines II, but for the bargain sale price that I found it for in the Playstation store, there are hours of entertainment to be had in here and lots of different gameplay elements to unlock. If you like simulation games, then this will absolutely be up your street.

Rating: 2 / 5