After Dark is the first expansion for Colossal Order and Paradox’s well-received citybuilder Cities: Skylines [official site], and is focused on tourism, leisure and neon-lit night skies. It’s out today, and here’s what I made of it.>
What could have been a goodwill-killer has turned into yet another poke in the eye for EA’s approach to ill-fated SimCity. Cities: Skylines had flung the doors open to modding from day one, and by now it’s unbelievably simple to render the entire game essentially unrecognisable, and massively improved, with a just a few clicks. With all this free stuff raining down, what possible point would there be in a paid add-on?
So you've built yourself a swanky modern Cities: Skylines metropolis, full of glass and steel and the hippest sorts of digital urbanites, and now you want to show it off to your friends. You could share your map through the normal channels—or you could fire up the new First Person Multiplayer mod, and then invite them over for an in-your-face tour.
The video above is from April, but the creator, Fr0sZ, said on Reddit that it accurately illustrates what the mod looks like in action. It's far enough along to share but still "in really early stages," he added, and so users may run into some bugs or notice a lack of polish in places. It supports other mods, but since there's no way to force clients to download any mods being used by the server, he recommended that anyone who wants to play with them keep their multiplayer server private.
The character animations aren't the most lifelike I've ever seen, but the city itself looks great, and the level of detail is especially remarkable given that the game was never meant to be seen from this perspective. You can even use the built-in grappling hook to latch onto a seagull and take it for a ride. That's just weird enough to make it must-play stuff in my books.