Do you like the dark? Do you like the way it moves? Do you come alive when neon kills the sun? If you answered yes to at least two of those questions, then first, rock on, and second, you'll be happy to hear that the first expansion to the hit Cities: Skylines has been revealed as After Dark, featuring a day/night cycle that Paradox Interactive says will have a big impact on how cities are managed.

"Day and night changes in the city and affects citizen schedules," the publisher explained. "Traffic is visibly slower at night and some zoned areas do not work with full efficiency, further easing the traffic. Service vehicles move around as usual."

Other changes in the expansion are Leisure Specialization for commercial areas, which will make them more active at night, and Beach Specialization, which will enable "beach activities" in commercial areas such as beach bars and restaurants along the shoreline. City services are also being expanded: Criminals will be transported from police buildings to prison, taxis will hit the streets, and an international airport will allow for much greater volumes of traffic than the current model.

Released in March, Cities: Skylines handily out-citied SimCity and became a surprise hit, setting a Paradox sales record and quickly racking up more than one million units sold. In July, developer Colossal Order said it intended to support the game "as long as we possibly and technically can." A release date for After Dark hasn't been announced, but Paradox says it's "coming soon."

It shouldn't be a surprise, given that it's sold over one million copies, but Cities: Skylines developer Colossal Order has pledged to support the game for "as long as we possibly and technically can while people enjoy playing."

In a huge TechRadar interview, CEO Mariina Hallikainen talks about the overwhelming success of the Paradox-backed citybuilder, as well as the work undertaken by the community through mods.

In recognition of the game's support, Hallikainen explains that they won't move on to a sequel until it doesn't make sense to continue supporting last March's release.

"I think the point where we have to move on to a sequel is when the technology is in such a state that it doesn't make any sense to continue working on Cities: Skylines," Hallikainen says. "I'm hoping that will be some years in the future because there's so many ideas we want to add to the game before going there."

As for what's next for the game, Hallikainen says, "We're going to be focusing on some great expansions and getting free updates out to generally improve the game. We're also very focused on improving the modding tools to allow them to do even cooler stuff."

More information is due out at Gamescom, this August. The game's most recent patch brought new buildings and pedestrian tunnels.

Thanks, VG247.

A new Cities: Skylines patch brings 30 new buildings, pedestrian tunnels, better auto-save functionality and a tonne of bug fixes, according to an announcement on the Paradox website. The patch addresses a bunch of mod-related bugs, which means some installed mods will be affected until their creators have made a few adjustments. 

The bug fixes include trains no longer getting stuck on map borders, de-zoned areas no longer magically re-zoning themselves, and a long list of more subtle fixes. It's also possible to unsubscribe from all mods at once now, which will come in handy as modders work to fix their wares to accommodate the new patch. 

"Due to some improvements with how mod-specific options are displayed in-game a fair amount of popular mods will be incompatible with 1.1.1b," the post reads. "We recommend using the steam launch options "-disableMods" and "-noWorkshop" until the mod creators have done the necessary, albeit very small, changes. More info on what needs to be done by our modders can be found here."

The full patch notes are over here. In the meantime, why not check out some of the most hellish cities ever created in Cities: Skyline, or see what happens when you build a city with only one house. 

We recently received a free update for Cities: Skylines in the form of European buildings and maps to use them in. Thing is, these new buildings will only grow in the European-themed maps. They won't show up in the cities you were building before the update, or in maps with other themes.

Modders, of course, have found a way to eliminate that peculiar restriction. There are two mods you'll need, the first of which is European Building Unlocker, by modder BloodyPenguin, which unlocks all the new European buildings and props for use in any map you want. This includes the buildings that grow in zoned areas, as well as the ones you place, like the European-style police stations, colleges, and so on. It also allows you to use the original buildings on any of the new Euro maps.

The second mod is Building Themes by modder boformer. This mod adds a 'Theme' tab to your districts panel that lets you control which districts the residential, commercial, and industrial European buildings will grow in. If you don't want the European buildings sprouting up all over the place, now you can specify where you'd like to see them.

Essentially, you can now play with those cool European buildings in whatever city and map you want, and dictate where they'll appear. Plus, if you change your mind about a district, you can just switch the theme. If there are buildings already in the district, they won't vanish, but will change to match the new theme the next time they level up. Pretty cool.

I tried the mods out on an old city of mine that I haven't played with in the past few months, and it works great. I just laid down some new residential and commercial zones on the map, used the new European district theme, and waited. Sure enough, European buildings began to grow, and I was able to place specialty buildings like fire stations and schools as well.

The Building Theme mod is in beta, and the modder is planning to add a theme manager tool, to allow players to create their own theme that can be used with custom assets. You can subscribe to both the Building Themes and European Buildings Unlocker mods on the Steam Workshop.