This feature was originally published on March 23, 2015. It's since been updated with new mods, assets, maps, and visual tools.

The Steam Workshop for mod-friendly city builder Cities: Skylines is stuffed with free goodies, and continues to grow by over a thousand new items per day. Players have been hard at work not just building their cities but making maps, mods, assets, and tools for others to enjoy. We've had a cruise through the Steam Workshop, and here's what we suggest for those looking to enhance their own cities.

Let's get started with mods! Once subscribed, you need only activate them from the Content Manager menu. Remember that Skylines' mods are global, so if you activate one, it'll be in effect for every game you play, until you turn it off.

City Vitals Watch

Tired of clicking between all the different icons to monitor your growing city's needs?  This mod gives you a configurable panel so you can get as much data as possible in a single view. Check on available electricity, water, sewage, crime, education, heathcare, employment, and just about everything else you might want to keep an eye on.

Citizen Tracker

Remember, you're not just a mayor, you're a Peeping Tom. Keep a close eye on anyone you want with the Citizen Tracker, which allows you to bookmark and tag your NPCs with icons so you can easily find them again later.

Improved Assets Panel

Skylines menus aren't particularly great or attractive, but now you can get a nice look at the assets you've subscribed to with the Improved Assets Panel, which gives you a thumbnail view of your various buildings and parks.

Flight Cimulator

Why settle for hovering over your city like a cloud when you can soar across it like a plane? The Flight Cimulator gives you control of one of the airplanes circling your town, turning your city sim into a flight sim.

All Spaces Unlockable

Skylines lets you build on 9 of the map's 25 available tiles, but we wouldn't be PC gamers if we didn't want access to all of them. All Spaces Unlockable does just that. It's not just for those who want to fill every square inch of map with buildings, but also for those who perhaps purchased a new tile and wound up only using a small fraction of it, or maybe decided further down the line to sprawl their city in an entirely different direction than they originally planned. Either way, it's a must-have.

Traffic Report Tool

It's easy to spot traffic problems, but harder to understand and solve them.  The Traffic Report Tool can help. Click a road and it'll show you the path of every vehicle using it, or en route to it. Click a building and it shows you the paths of all vehicles headed to or leaving it. Click an individual vehicle, and it'll show you its entire path, from start to destination. It's still in beta, but it's a promising tool for helping you understand and untangle troublesome traffic snarls.

Fire Spread

While Skylines doesn't officially provide city-busting disasters, there are a few things you can do to unleash hell on your populace. Dams, for example, can be used (or misused) to  bury your city in poo. If that's a little too gross, you can try the Fire Spread mod, which lets fires jump from building to building, perfect for putting your fire department to the test.

Extended Public Transport UI

As your city grows, keeping track of your public transportation network can be tricky. The  Extended Public Transport UI makes it much, much easier, with better, toggled views of individual bus, metro, and train lines. A great tool.

Extended Road Upgrade

A recent update added the ability to upgrade between one-way and two-way roads without having to bulldoze, but the  Extended Road Upgrade mod, which did it first, is still worth checking out. It works a little differently than the unmodded game—and I think a little better—especially when it comes to changing the direction of your one-way roads.

First-Person Camera

Technically  it's a free camera, unshackling you from a bird's-eye view and taking you all the way down to street level for a closer look at your city and its inhabitants. You may not be thrilled with what you see—Skylines wasn't meant to be viewed from quite this close up—but it's still fun to use.

Chirpy Exterminator

It's hard to be legitimately angry with Chirpy: he's just trying to communicate citizen's feelings to you, and he's so darn earnest about it! That said: die, Chirpy. A patch recently added a volume slider for Chirpy's incessant tweeting, but the Chirpy Exterminator mod lets you ice him for good. Rest in peace, with the emphasis on peace.

On the next page, let's spice up your city with some new buildings.

Even those happy with Cities: Skylines have probably peered down at their creations and wished there was a bit more diversity in the types of buildings. A few too many identical skyscrapers or residences can take some of the wonder away from your city and make it feel a bit too plain. No worries. There's thousands of new buildings to subscribe to, and once you do, they'll start appearing in your city.

DP's Beautification Sets

This is an easy pick for you and a simply massive amount of work by DPruett2333, who has been filling the workshop with prettier, updated versions of Skylines's buildings by adding flourishes like benches, bushes, parking spaces, and other little details to the game's hospitals, power plants, schools, and homes. Grab all of DP's beautification sets: the  Building Set, the Residential Set, and the Commercial Set, and make your city more pleasing to the eye.

Gula's buildings

By now you've heard a former Maxis artist is making custom assets for Skylines, and they're well worth grabbing for your own city. From the  coal power plant that produces more power, but also more pollution, to the adorable Down-and-Out Burger restaurant and Sherlock's Coffee shop, to the replica of Tampa's SunTrust office tower, these finely detailed creations should be part of your town. 

Ericsson Globe

Straight outta Stockholm, the Ericsson Globe is the largest hemispherical building in the world. While it's not to real-world scale in the game, the  Ericsson Globe by ArakanI is still a beautiful recreation of a unique building that will delight your residents and give your city another notable landmark.

Space Shuttle

Houston, we've solved a problem. This unique building lets you plop a space shuttle memorial in your city, giving your residents and tourists the nice eyeful of NASA you've been looking for.

Stargate Metro System

Proving a metro for your citizens is great, but not particularly exciting. Replacing your metro station with an Atlantis Stargate? That's a little better, even if it just takes them to the mall and not another planet.

Wayne Enterprises

Every city needs a hero, and every hero needs an office building to serve as headquarters for his multi-billion dollar corporation. Wayne Enterprises makes a nice addition to your city and a place for Bruce Wayne to sleep through shareholders meetings, especially if you build it on the Gotham City map.

Space Needle

Seattle's iconic observation tower has been a tourist attraction since its construction for the 1962 World's Fair. Now the Space Needle can tower over your own city, pointing up at space as if to say, "Hey, space."

Turning Torso

Another real-world landmark, the Turning Torso is the tallest skyscraper in Sweden. This recreation nicely captures its grace and elegance. While it's scaled down to match Skylines' native buildings, it's still a classy landmark for your metropolis.

Combine Citadel

Welcome to City 17. It's safer here, and nothing inspires a feeling of safety like a towering alien monolith, right? Plunk down a Combine Citadel in your town to remind the concerned citizens below that you've got everything under control. Just keep an eye peeled for trouble-making scientists.

Ghostbusters Firestation

While ghosts, ghouls, and giant marshmallow golems don't present a threat to your city—for now, at least—fires certainly do. You can still let bustin' make you feel good by adding this replica of the Ghostbusters fire station HQ. 

Recycling Center

Tired of landfills and incineration plants stinking up your beautiful city? Replace them with the Recycling Center. It's slower to process garbage than the traditional choice, but it's clean and green.

Bluth's Banana Stand

Why not add the Bluth's Banana Stand to your commercial district? I hear there's money in it. It's also a nice landmark for your residents, since they can agree to meet at the big yellow joint. May burn down occasionally.

Chirper HQ

If you haven't completely killed Chirper using the mod on the first page, you've probably at least minimized and muted it. Still, why not give it a spot in your city with the Chirper Headquarters? It's a unique building so it'll allow employment and tourism, and it'll give the adorable yet annoying bird a chance to (quietly) show its face.

On the next page, some new options for your city's most important features: roads.

So. You've built a beautiful city but you can't help notice a few problems, like the fact that your citizens are living in piles of garbage and corpses? Unless you've simply slashed your municipal budget to the bone, this is probably due to traffic issues. Here are some intersections you can drop in your city to get traffic flowing smoothly.

Pedestrian Suspension Bridge

With so much focus on cars, it's easy to forget to make nice walkways for foot traffic as well. Found in the parks menu, this lovely Pedestrian Suspension Bridge is pleasing to both the eyes and the feet of your little citizens.

Timbo's Marvelous Interchange Emporium

While I still struggle to draw a simple off-ramp that doesn't look like it's already weathered a few earthquakes, Timboh's been cranking out a ton of beautiful and useful interchanges. Subscribing to Timboh's Emporium means you'll never be at a loss for having a great way to make roads meet and greet.

Public Transport Place

I'm guilty of making public transportation an afterthought, with train stations, metro stations, and bus depots simply plopped where I can find room among everything else. This pre-made collection of roads and walkways makes it easy to centralize your public transportation, and allows passengers to quickly find their way between buses, trains, and metro tunnels by using raised walkways. All you have to do is plug the buildings into the right spots.

Double-Paperclip

This interchange is so big it didn't even fit into the game's asset manager, but it's worth it. With realistic slopes and angles, this Double Paperclip interchange will get your citizens on their way in a smart and realistic fashion.

8-Way Roundabout

I feel like building an entirely new city around this beauty. Built to handle traffic from eight directions, this roundabout also features enough room in the center for bus stops, metro stations, several plazas, and even a couple buildings.

Small Green Roundabout

The thing about most roundabouts is that they're huge, and tough to fit into a city you've already built without destroying a good portion of it. The Small Green Roundabout is a nice option for neighborhoods or places without a lot of heavy traffic. Includes footpaths and nice decorations.

Elevated Pedestrian Roundabout

Cars aren't the only thing that need to get around. This slick Elevated Pedestrian Roundabout makes it easy for walkers to get through your city as well, with walkways up and down to street level, and room for a small park in the center.

On the next page, let's add some new parks, plazas, and statues to your favorite city.

I'm sure your city is lovely already, but you're probably tired of adding the same old parks and plazas. Here's a few more to choose from.

Enterprise Park

Let your tiny citizens boldly go where no one has gone before, like this handsome park commemorating the USS Enterprise.

Modern Art Plaza

Are games art? How about cubes? Invite your residents to visit this Modern Art Plaza, where they can stare at a large black cube and pretend to understand just what it means.

Sunken Plaza

Perfect for your downtown areas, this attractive sunken plaza gives your citizens a spot to relax among the skyscrapers in a busy city.

Public Soccer Field

Skylines has a stadium for professional athletes, but how about local talent? This public soccer field should please the sports fans in your neighborhoods. While I haven't seen any games break out on my field, people do walk around in it a bit.

Shrine of Azura

Cities: Skyrim? Sure, why not. Your city probably has a few followers of the Daedric prince, so now they've got a place to worship or just chill out. This Shrine of Azura statue has the same properties of the Statue of Wealth. Talos is available as well.

Jesper's Fields

It's easy to neglect your industrial areas, and it's also a little weird to place city plazas and playgrounds alongside them. That's why this collection of fields by Jesper is perfect for your farming areas. They blend in perfectly without drawing a crowd.

Skate Park

Teenagers in your city can be occasionally seen with skateboards, so why not give them a spot to shred? This concrete skate park has ramps, rails, and even graffiti.

1x1 Swing Park

Sometimes you want to improve a crowded town without having to destroy anything to make room. If you've only got a single square of available space, this 1x1 Swing Park is perfect for brightening the neighborhood without removing a single house.

Next up, some of the best maps you can start building on.

Now that you've got ton of new stuff to build with, where do you actually want to build? Here's a collection of maps and saved games you can put your personal mark on.

Catan XL

Finally, a map that really calls out for a multiplayer version Skylines. This Catan XL map gives you hexes to build on, each with their own separate resources.

Sea Turtle Falls

With rivers, mountains, beaches, valleys, and waterfalls, Sea Turtle Falls has something for just about everyone, and presents a beautiful and interesting challenge for city builders.

River Dale

This massive and impressive circular city bisected by a river sports almost 300,000 residents. There's still plenty of room to grow, however. Can you add a few more rings?

Volcano Crown

Perfect for aspiring supervillains, this map features an extinct volcano that now hosts a lake. With rivers trailing down to the sea, and several nearby islands, you can turn this beautiful map into a thriving city.

Boulder Rapids

With beaches, rivers, mountains, and hills, Boulder Rapids is a nice map to start a city on, especially if you plan on using a dam at some point: there are great locations for several.

Bora Bora

Not only is this Bora Bora map beautiful, it's a remarkably challenging location with an extremely limited amount of building space. Can you build a working city without destroying its natural beauty?

Delta of the Pharaoh

With ore-rich mountains, expansive sandy reaches, and fertile flood plains, this map inspired by the Nile Delta is a great spot for creating your own jewel in the desert.

Los Santos

While we wait for GTA V to appear on PC, here's a fun way to visit the sprawling city of Los Santos, already built and containing districts that accurately mirror the game's locations. If you want to build your own city, here's a version only containing the roads.

Mission to Mars

Mars needs donut trucks! Civilize the red planet by taking advantage of pockets of ore and carve out a working city on this map based on Mars's Daedalia Planum. It goes great with this Mars color correction tool.

Cologne, Germany

This highly detailed map of Cologne, Germany features the Rhine, highways, lakes, and resources. Will you build an accurate replica of the city, or something completely new?

Zion National Park

The problem with national parks is the government gets upset when you start building skyscrapers all over them. Problem solved. This replica of Utah's Zion National Park is not just beautiful but extremely challenging to build a working city on.

Gabe Newell's Face

If you've ever dreamed of building a city on Gabe Newell's face, then I have good news for you. I also have bad news, because that's a very troubling dream.

Finally, let's spruce up the way Skylines looks with some visual tools on the next page.

Skylines is plenty pretty, but so are tons of games, and PC gamers never stop trying to make them look even better. Here are some visual mods and tools to get the game looking as sweet as possible.

Dynamic Resolution

The Dynamic Resolution mod will let you tinker with your game's internal resolution and scale it up or down depending on your wants or needs. Pressing F10 brings up a slider to make adjustments, though be prepared for a major FPS hit if your GPU can't handle it. Nicely, the mod shows your FPS while you're making adjustments, and even provides a tickbox for another graphics tweak, the Ambient Occlusion mod, which can be used to make the game even prettier.

Moving Sun

 If you don't care for the static sunlight of Skylines, how about a sun that moves across the sky all day? There's no nighttime—as soon as the sun sets, it rises again—but it's still nice to watch the shadows grow and lengthen as the day comes to an end and to see the sunlight spill over your city in the morning.

Isometric Camera

Turn the clock back on city simulators with this Isometric Camera tool. It gives this new game a distinctly retro feel.

Bordercities Visual Overhaul

Enjoy cell shading and want to bring it to your city? This configurable tool lets you apply a fresh coat of Borderlands-like visual style to Skylines, and once activated can be toggled on and off with the key of your choice.

1977

Revisit the 70's with this Instagram-inspired 1977 LUT. I can already hear the bell bottoms scraping the pavement and the cops growing bushy moustaches, can't you?

Sun Shafts

If you can stand a little performance hit, you might want sun shafts to pretty up your city. They can be toggled on and off and give the visuals a heavenly touch.

Toy Film Camera

I don't keep the tilt-shift effect on when I play Skylines, but it's nice for screenshots, and when combined with this Toy Film Camera LUT, you can really give your city a bright, fun, novel appearance.

Mirror's Edge Menu LUT

Maybe the government in Mirror's Edge was a wee bit oppressive, but it's hard to argue that one of the positive results was an extremely neat and tidy city. Now you can emulate it with the clean white, sharp red, and cool blue of the Mirror's Edge Menu LUT.

No doubt while we've been compiling this list, a few thousand more custom creations have appeared in the Cities: Skylines Steam Workshop. Don't forget to check it regularly to find your own favorites.

With strong sales, positive reviews (ours is here), and thousands of player-made assets and mods, Cities: Skylines has quickly become one of 2015's hits. I spoke to Mariina Hallikainen, CEO of developer Colossal Order, over Skype on Wednesday, and asked her about the origins of Skylines, 2013's SimCity, mods and modders, and plans for the future.

PC Gamer: Considering that you set a Paradox sales record at launch, you've sold a half-million copies of Skylines, and that both the reviews and the reaction from players has been almost entirely positive, can I assume your offices now actually resemble the massive Colossal Order skyscraper that's in the game?

Mariina Hallikainen: [Laughs] We're still in the same office, we moved over here just last January so there's no need for anything too different from that. We're of course very happy. We're very pleased.

It's pretty common in discussions about Skylines to see 2013's SimCity being brought up. While it sold well, it's clear a lot of people were disappointed with some of the choices Maxis and EA made. When Skylines was being developed, was SimCity something that was discussed often at Colossal Order, and was there an effort to deliberately avoid some of the same choices they made?

Yeah, that's a tricky question, because of course, we always have thought of SimCity 4 as the benchmark. This is due to the fact that we actually did plan this game when we started the company back in 2009. We started to think about... Colossal Order wanted to make a city builder some time in the future. We knew we couldn't do it right from the start because we were five people. I started the company with no experience on the PC platform. The guys had been working on mobile before Colossal Order. It was really something that ideas kind of came from, really, the classic city builders.

But of course we were extremely afraid that people will just think of us as a cheap knock-off or something, that we have been just trying to copy what they did in SimCity. So it was a little bit of a daunting task for us. But of course there are things that are very similar and I guess it's kind of unavoidable in a sense that the city building genre, I think, it's based on the great SimCity. So it's something that we knew we would be compared.

Was Skylines already actively in development when the 2013 SimCity came out?

It was not actively in development at that time. When they announced [SimCity 2013] I was pretty sure there was no way we would ever be able to convince Paradox that we should make this game. [Laughs] But, yeah, they gave us the green light after they saw what happened with SimCity.

So that was actually... seeing SimCity 2013 kind of stumble, that's when Paradox said, hey, maybe we should go ahead with this since people aren't really happy with the last SimCity?

Yeah, I think it must have helped a lot.

Now, when I was playing Skylines pre-release, some people knew I was playing it, and one of the questions that most of them asked was, is there a multiplayer mode? Did you consider any kind of multiplayer for Skylines at any point?

No. Basically, we are of course with very limited resources and with the small budget we have, it was completely out of the question. Even if we think about... we have a certain philosophy behind the game, and it is definitely so that it is really a singleplayer game. It's you creating your own city, your own world. You don't want anybody to kind of come and mess that up. The experiences we've had previously, we decided that we will go singleplayer only, at least for now.

Yeah, I'm not even really sure how multiplayer would work. I think there's a collaborative potential, its fun to sit with someone at the same computer and build a city together, and our guy Tom was streaming the game a few times last week and he had fun with the people watching, taking suggestions and things, but I don't really know how a multiplayer city builder would work with two people messing with the same city at the same time.

Yeah, that's exactly the problem, I think, and especially because there's the simulation running, there's so many things that can go wrong, I think it's something that you really have to put a lot of effort and a lot of people to work on that, to make it really work and be right, and so we definitely didn't feel that it was important to do at this time. And, I don't see it as a high priority feature at any time in the future, because there's still so many things we want to add to the game. We have quite a lot of plans, those things we couldn't implement before the release, like tunnels and European buildings that we are working on now. I think there's a lot of things we want to add to the game before we can even discuss multiplayer.

So you do have plans for future updates, or is it a DLC type thing?

So, basically we have discussed it with Paradox and it's going to be a similar model to what they have for Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4, so it's a bigger expansion with some smaller DLC and also free content. The tunnels and the European buildings we already discussed that these would be free updates, because I very strongly feel that the tunnels, for example, should have—I feel it's a part of the game. It's an integral part of the game and it needs to be there. So, we agreed that we, of course, having only 13 people working at Colossal couldn't make it in the original scope, we really just want to add that later on, and I think it belongs to all the players.

You compared the future expansions to what Paradox does with CK2 and EU4. Those are, a lot of times, different parts of the world or different time periods. Is that something that Skylines is going to have?

No, it's more to the scope. Basically, how we did it earlier with Cities in Motion, for example, we had smaller DLC and we were working on those, but here we want to kind of focus on one bigger feature. I can't say what those are exactly at this time, but we are planning on something that really brings something new, hours of gameplay to the game. So, massive expansion.

I can't say more about the pricing but it's something similar to what they have done with CK2 and EU4. Simultaneously with this we add free features and free content to the players who already own the game. So, the players who don't want to put any money to extra content, they still get something out of the version. This is what we're planning, there's always like this bigger expansion that will bring a lot to the game, then the free updates as well probably [smaller] DLC. But it will be so that it comes with a full package that has all of this, the paid and the free update for the player. Which I think is really nice, because we get to focus on something more major and then also there will be the free update, because I think it is important that the players who have bought the game now and for some reason don't want to, for example, put any money to a certain expansion, they can kind of pick and choose what they want but still get something, something like updates to the game so you don't have to pay for absolutely everything. I think that's very cool.

Are there any plans for a terrain editor you can use while you're actually working on a city?

We have discussed that. There is no news about that yet. So, basically—terraforming has been actually discussed quite a lot. It is a little bit of a tricky feature so we need to think about it a lot to see if it would be possible or not. We have some ideas. We'll keep you guys updated on that

Given the successful sales of the game, do you think that's changed the scope of future expansions? Do you feel like you have a little bit more room to grow because the game has sold well?

Well, [Paradox] is very happy. [Laughs] It is something that we have discussed that now we have a chance to add more to the game both in the scope of the planned expansions and for the free content as well. One of the major differences now after these really massive sales—it's still a little bit overwhelming for us over here—is support for the modding. So, we're basically discussing that we really want to emphasize that, we want to bring more to it, so we definitely got more support, also from Paradox to work on that, which is absolutely fantastic.

I checked this morning, and there's over 13,000 player-made assets and mods in the Steam Workshop at the moment. Have as anyone at Colossal Order been trying them or playing with them or seeing what people have been up to?

Yeah, I mean, we've been checking what's happening there and it's really, really great to see, because last time I checked it was 12,000. [Laughs] So, the number keeps going up. It's absolutely fantastic. I think this is exactly what city builders are all about. It's about the creativity, getting the people to join the development of the game, and I think this is absolutely wonderful to see, so many people actually joining the modding community, and yeah, we've been checking. There's actually really, really cool stuff. We have been checking out the different kind of mods, too. Because there are so many things that we kind of planned to do later and the modders basically already did them. So, we have to say a little bit... are we needed anymore? [Laughs]

Right! Yeah, there seems to be a few things in there that you could possibly officially add in a future patch. People have been... one of the first things they did was unlock so you could build on all 25 tiles. And then a few other things that look like they could be possibly incorporated into an official patch at some point.

Yeah, absolutely, there's so many things to choose from, but I think most interesting ones are kind of those that... like the GTA V map, there's the Mars project. So much creativity, and you know, things that we couldn't kind of think when we entered this project, that people would come up with these kind of ideas and I think that's exactly the great part about this. Because we're only 13 people here, but there are so many ideas out there, so many capable people that can really contribute to this game.

I even saw there's a former Maxis artist who's making mods for the game, have you seen that yet?

Yeah, I saw the article on that, yeah. I think it was on PC Gamer, actually. Yeah, yeah, um. [Laughs] I mean, it's really, really great to see people starting to create content for the game and we of course welcome... [Laughs] welcome really capable environment artists to do that as well. So, it's really interesting to see.

We keep suckling on Cities: Skylines news teat, because a) it's good, b) it's doing well—having just broken the 500k sales mark—and c) it has mod support, and so has a community that's consistently pumping out great stuff.

For instance, right now on the Steam Workshop you can find a couple of buildings from Bryan Shannon—a former Maxis employee who worked on both SimCity and its expansion, Cities of Tomorrow.

Whatever you think of SimCity—and I know what you think, I have read the internet—it was a beautiful looking game. That's reflected in Shannon's buildings, which fit nicely into Skylines' aesthetic while experimenting with its look.

"Overall, this coal power plant is a deviation from the original style," writes Shannon of his coal power plant. "This asset introduces a nice dirty brown brick in to the game's overall neutral palette."

You can see Shannon's Skylines buildings here, and see the work he did for SimCity over at his blog.

Update: Shannon is now on Patreon, taking pledges to fund his work inside of Cities: Skylines.

Cities: Skylines is being pirated, but Paradox Interactive isn't panicking. Instead, the publisher will continue to support the game, thus making the Steam version more attractive than any unpatchable and unmoddable pirated version could ever be.

Taking to Twitter, Paradox's Sham Jorjani made a case for post-launch support being the best discouragement for pirates. Noting a steep 16 per cent increase in pirated copies of the game, Jorjani Tweeted that "our plan for pirates is to make a great game even better through free updates - making it more convenient to use Steam instead."

"It's all about offering the superior service," he added. "That's how we bring down piracy. By making the paid experience a superior one."

Jorjani went on to name Netflix as an example of convenience trumping piracy in the digital age. Meanwhile, Paradox's quick rollout of Magicka updates 14 in 13 days meant that users preferred to actually pay for the game and get auto-updates, rather than manually download the game each time the studio patched it. 

To put it simply: ongoing content rollouts and mod support is a better way to combat piracy than DRM.

"Or....we could build our own ecosystem," Jorjani joked. "Call it....P-play....or...Plorigins...or P-vapor or somesuch...yeah let's do that."

Cities: Skylines has already attracted a massive audience: modders have already added a first-person mode, while one dedicated player has recreated Los Santos.