I’m impressed they waited this long. Using earthquakes and hurricanes to play skyscraper dominoes has long been the alpha and the omega feature of citybuilder games (if you didn’t trash the suburbs with an alien invasion, you weren’t playing Sim City 2000 right). It’s taken Cities: Skylines [official site] 19 months to do the entirely obvious thing, and I’m glad to say it’s done it in style. Its new natural disasters are absolutely terrifying. … [visit site to read more]

Aside from starting a new tradition of unusually-named Steam Awards, Valve have also pulled out their worn and adored bargain bucket and have begun to fill it with games you ll enthusiastically buy and probably never play. Yes, it’s their Autumn Sale. In the streets, the apocalyptic jockeying for TVs and blenders has started. The moon has turned blood red. And I looked and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Black Friday, and sales followed with him. … [visit site to read more]

If you, like me, kneel at your bedside to whisper the prayer “Lord Godzilla, rise from your slumber and scour humanity from the Earth with your purifying nuclear fire”, you may be comforted by apocalyptic visions in the upcoming Cities: Skylines [official site] expansion. Natural Disasters won’t bring rampaging monsters to the spunky build ’em up (as far as I know) but it will rain meteors, wash sins away with tsunami, and all that good stuff. The wait is almost over, as publishers Paradox have announced Natural Disasters will launch on November 29th. They’ve shown it off in a new trailer too. … [visit site to read more]

Several cities in the popular construction sim Cities: Skylines [official site] have been destroyed or heavily damaged by a freak series of natural disasters. A tornado, earthquake, forest fire, meteor impact and flood all occurred within seconds of each other and devastated a number of metropolises, killing thousands of tiny people who do not really exist. Footage of the deadly phenomenon was captured by the developers of the game, who are thrilled with the result. Warning: the following video footage contains images some viewers may find mildly interesting.

… [visit site to read more]

There are tons of ways to modify your Cities: Skylines [official site] experience. With official DLC packs that incorporate anything from bustling nightlife to horrific apocalyptic scenarios, and a bustling modding community, the custom city-building experience you’ve dreamed of is right at your fingertips.

Paradox Interactive this week launched a new content pack to honor its talented player content creators. The first Cities: Skylines Content Creator Pack is titled Art Deco, and features the work of Matt ‘Shroomblaze’ Crux.

… [visit site to read more]

Building and running a safe and efficient city can be fun, sure. Cities: Skylines [official site] is already great for that. You know what’s also fun? Smashing things. Cities: Skylines is now trying harder with that. Publishers Paradox today announced a new expansion for Colossal Order’s city-builder, named Natural Disasters. Oh yes!

… [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

I was certain I was done with city building sims. In fact, I think I thought I was done with sims. Gone was the magic of the classic Sim City 2000, the perfect balance of cartoony mayhem and rude interruptions of graphs. It felt like play, not work, even connecting up the water pipes. The genre disappeared down a hole I wasn’t interested in descending, a terrifying underground world where graphs ruled. And then along came Cities: Skylines, and I was proven wrong.

… [visit site to read more]

With Euro 2016 ‘kicking off’ [a technical footballing term meaning ‘throwing a wobbler’ -ballkicking ed.]> tomorrow, Cities: Skylines [official site] has brought football home with a little free DLC. The ‘Match Day’ DLC lets players build a stadium in their city, pick kit colours for their home team, earn a cut of ticket sales, enact stadium-related policies, and – oh god help – try to deal with the increased traffic of match day.

This is accompanied by a new update which gives the city-building game’s pre-order bonus DLC bits to all players. Hello, bouncy castles and botanical gardens!

… [visit site to read more]

Okay, so in a situation which rapidly escalated I started off admiring someone’s recreation of Seattle in Cities: Skylines, ended up browsing some of the Steam Workshop mods and assets and am now trying to build a clown retirement community complete with clown cemetery.

Here is the awesome Seattle thing:

… [visit site to read more]

I have been inside a sauna and I believe the health benefits are dubious at best. Snowfall, the latest expansion for Cities: Skylines [official site], disagrees with me. It reckons that saunas are both recreational and restorative, a mix of a clinic and a park. Build one and your citizens will send a flood of smiles bursting out of your city like souls ascending to heaven. I don t understand why this is. When I sat in a sauna EVERYTHING WAS HOT and the AIR ITSELF WAS HOT and don t even get me started on the door or the floor or what it was like to even move an inch.

However, this concludes the design disagreements that I have with Snowfall, which I think is a rather lovely and charming addition to Skylines. Let me explain why.

… [visit site to read more]