Cities: Skylines Promotional Picture

Have you ever played a game that is so incredibly engrossing that you play all day? Then night comes around, and you play all night and suddenly it’s 4 AM the next day? You look at your phone and think, “there’s gotta be something wrong with it” because there’s no way that you played up until 4 AM and didn’t realize it. Does all of this sound familiar? Well, that’s what my family and I experienced when we downloaded the game and decided to play it alone, alongside each other. This game is none other than *drumroll* Paradox Interactive’s Cities: Skylines. This game is like if you decided to try riding a bike for the first time, but end up getting stuck riding the bike for 13 hours straight. By the end of those 13 hours, you’re a f***ing expert, but is it worth it? Yes. The game, not the bike thing.

At the beginning of the game, everything is perfect. The birds are chirping, you got all the electricity in the world, the rivers are unpolluted and the people haven’t discovered crime yet. So you have a real metropolitan Adam and Eve situation, at first anyway. The game does this on purpose, it lulls you into a false sense of security. It wants to set the stage for the carnage that is to come, and it does it effectively. Aside from how this game takes over your life, the best features are as follows:

Easy to Learn Rules: There aren’t any “rules” in the game, but at the same time there are. Hear me out. You can’t build an entire city without distributing electricity across said city, boom, that’s a rule. You have to have adequate sewage and clean water, shazam, another rule. These “rules” are incredibly easy to learn, and eventually, as your city accelerates they become habits. They make it easy to distribute electricity throughout because any new construction built next to an existing structure that already has electricity automatically gets plugged into the grid. Ensuring that your city has clean water is as easy as extending the water pipes to include new structures. The City Growth is Crazy Gratifying: Notice how I’ve mentioned that the city will accelerate incredibly quick. Seriously, I cannot say this enough, the city is gonna f***ing speed up to the point where you’re constantly doing something, never taking a break. Now this may sound kinda trash, but in reality, the growth is mostly good (if you’ve been running your city responsibly and not like a corrupt fat-cat) and since that growth is good, I swear to you, it triggers pleasure centers in the brain. THIS GAME IS ADDICTING. The Menus Aren’t Too Extra: I’m gonna assume that there is someone reading this that doesn’t understand my use of “extra” here. I’m saying the menus aren’t too intricate, they’re easy and fun to use. The menus that you’re going to use more than any others are the Budget, Zoning, and Electricity/Water tabs. Really, you can probably get by using those tabs like 90% of the time. The Stats tab shows you a wildly varied set of things occurring in your city like crime, education, fires, etc.

But seriously, this game was $9.99. I can’t stop playing it. It’s, by far, the best purchase I’ve made on Steam this year. If you’ve been wandering around the store, wondering what game to play next, give this game a shot. This game has all of the best features of the classic Sim City, but is so much better because it’s been 30 years since that first installation of Sim City. ANYWAY, buy the game, and lastly, let me leave you with a few tips:

ALWAYS make sure that when you’re building roads, you build as many possible offshoots as possible. Trust me, you’re going to need these offshoots in order to zone for housing, commercial and industrial areas.

make sure that when you’re building roads, you build as many possible offshoots as possible. Trust me, you’re going to need these offshoots in order to zone for housing, commercial and industrial areas. ALWAYS place your sewage outputs as far down-river as possible. Seriously, as your city builds and grows, your body of water is going to get really gross, and it spreads. This is also why your water pumping plants have to be extremely upstream, so that you don’t get shitty water *rim shot*.

place your sewage outputs as far down-river as possible. Seriously, as your city builds and grows, your body of water is going to get really gross, and it spreads. This is also why your water pumping plants have to be extremely upstream, so that you don’t get shitty water *rim shot*. ALWAYS spend the money when you have it because the inner economic workings of these virtual cities are really, really fickle. So just build the school when you got the money, buddy.

Hope you guys enjoyed this, and I also hope that you give this game a shot.