Info about Cities: Skylines: Official game description: Starter Deluxe Edition ====================== Set up your city building experience for success with the **Starter Deluxe Edition**. This package gives you the most popular starter DLCs as a groundwork for a thriving metropolis. And not to forget, with some good vibes in the background. The Deluxe Edition Upgrade Pack: -------------------------------- Included in the Deluxe Edition are 5 In-game historical monuments from around the world, the games original soundtrack as well as a digital art book. **Five in-game items include:** * Statue of Liberty * Eiffel Tower * Brandenburg Gate * Arc de Triomphe * Grand central terminal **Original Soundtrack:** This Original Soundtrack includes 14 unique tracks mixed from the ambient music of the game, allowing you to enjoy the wonderful music whenever you want. **Digital Art book:** See the concepts behind the buildings! The book features almost a 32 hand drawn concepts of the game various buildings and the story behind each. Industries Expansion: --------------------- In one of the most in-depth expansions in Cities: Skylines, Industry becomes a larger and more meaningful part of the game with this expansion. Players can customize their industrial areas with supply chains for the four different resource types and unique factories. Well managed industry areas will level up and become more efficient. Aside from production chains, there is a new city service for handling mail and the cargo airport eases import and export of factory goods. There are five new maps, new policies, new city services, new buildings (including resource extractors, manufacturers, warehouses and unique factories) and more. Mass Transit Expansion: ----------------------- _Cities: Skylines - Mass Transit_ brings several new systems into play to help citizens traverse their towns in speed and style. Commuters can now get around on water, up high mountain peaks, and even through the sky thanks to the addition of ferries, monorails, cable cars, and blimps. Along with new transit service buildings, mass transit hubs where lines can exchange passengers, new scenarios, new landmarks, and new road types, urban planners now have more options than ever to add unique style and personality to their growing cities. Synthetic Dawn Radio: --------------------- Get in the groove with some stellar tunes from Synthetic Dawn, the most far-out radio station to land in Cities: Skylines, ever! This channel features 16 original new songs, both instrumental and vocal jams, spanning four unique genres: 80s Electro, Vocoding Electro, Breakbeats and Futuristic Synths. Tune in and zone out as synth-spin master DJ Jessica Statler brings the funk to Synthetic Dawn Radio. All That Jazz Radio: -------------------- With All That Jazz, Paradox is introducing an all new kind of traffic jam in Cities: Skylines. The briefly internet-famous Jazz Boatman returns as DJ, so players can dig harder than a jackhammer at a road repair. The new All That Jazz radio station will feature 16 new songs across several smooth genres: Classic, Latin, Funky and Chill-Out Jazz. About the Game ============== **Cities: Skylines** is a modern take on the classic city simulation. The game introduces new game play elements to realize the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city whilst expanding on some well-established tropes of the city building experience. You’re only limited by your imagination, so take control and reach for the sky! Multi-tiered and challenging simulation --------------------------------------- Constructing your city from the ground up is easy to learn, but hard to master. Playing as the mayor of your city you’ll be faced with balancing essential requirements such as education, water electricity, police, fire fighting, healthcare and much more along with your citys real economy system. Citizens within your city react fluidly, with gravitas and with an air of authenticity to a multitude of game play scenarios. Extensive local traffic simulation ---------------------------------- Colossal Order's extensive experience developing the Cities in Motion series is fully utilized in a fully fleshed out and well-crafted local traffic simulation. Districts and Policies ---------------------- Be more than just an administrator from city hall. Designating parts of your city as a district results in the application of policies which results in you rising to the status of Mayor for your own city. Utilize the Day and Night Cycle ------------------------------- The city changes during the hours of the day and affects citizen schedules. Traffic is visibly slower at night and some zoned areas do not work with full efficiency. Cities: Skylines will put you in control of managing the different aspects of the day and night cycles. Extensive modding support ------------------------- Build or improve on existing maps and structures. You can then import your creations into the game, share them as well as download the creations of other city builders on the Steam workshop. Release date: 10 Mar, 2015 Categories: City Builder, Management Simulation, Traffic Simulation, Resource Management, Economic Simulation, Mod Support, Sandbox Creation, Single-player - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Deep, realistic city management (weight 0.99): Cities: Skylines offers deep and realistic city management, allowing players to control every aspect of urban planning, from infrastructure and public transportation to economic policies and public services. The game provides limitless creative freedom for designing diverse cities, enhanced by detailed graphics, dynamic day-night cycles, and weather effects. DLCs further expand gameplay with new systems and mechanics. - Extensive modding community support (weight 0.57): The game has a robust modding community and Steam Workshop integration, offering countless user-created assets, buildings, maps, and gameplay enhancements. Mods provide extensive customization, allowing players to tailor the game to their preferences, improve traffic management, and add new features. The Steam Workshop offers a plethora of free custom content, some of which rivals similar DLC content. - Engaging and addictive gameplay (weight 0.44): The game is highly engaging and addictive, making players lose track of time and providing a satisfying mix of challenge and reward. The game is immersive, making players lose track of time. The game is so engaging that the reviewer forgot to eat while playing. - Endless possibilities and customization (weight 0.37): The game offers vast possibilities and choices in gameplay, with endless replayability due to DLCs, mods, and robust gameplay mechanics. The game allows for the construction of almost anything imaginable, limited only by the player's creativity. The game provides insane freedom, absurd customization options and incredible planning freedom. - Enjoyable and well-optimized game (weight 0.32): The game is enjoyable, well-optimized, and worth the price, especially with DLCs and mods. The base game is incredibly solid, even without DLC. The reviewer expresses love for the game. - Visually appealing and detailed (weight 0.2): The game is visually appealing, with beautiful and detailed graphics that create a sense of a living and dynamic world. The game's art style has aged gracefully and can look breathtakingly realistic with the right graphics mods. The graphics are detailed and still look good. - Intuitive and user-friendly interface (weight 0.08): The game features an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy for both newcomers and veterans of the genre to dive in and start building. Numerous online tutorials and guides are available for both beginners and advanced players to improve their building and management skills. The game is beginner-friendly. - Immersive and high-quality sound (weight 0.05): The sound design is immersive, with high-quality sound effects that bring the city to life. The sound design, including bustling city streets and honking, was considered oddly soothing. The reviewer praises the game's music as being very good and adding to the atmosphere. Common complaints: - Excessive, expensive DLC policy (weight 0.44): Many reviews express concerns about the game's DLC policy. Players feel essential features are locked behind paywalls, making the base game feel incomplete and pushing the overall cost of the game too high. Some reviewers feel that the DLCs are overpriced for the content they offer. - Steep learning curve, poor tutorials (weight 0.34): Many reviews mention a steep learning curve and a lack of adequate tutorials. New players can feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the game's systems and mechanics, leading to frustration. The game doesn't adequately explain certain mechanics, requiring players to seek external guidance. - Base game needs mods (weight 0.28): Many reviewers feel the base game is limited and becomes boring without mods. They feel that the core game lacks depth and that mods are essential to improve the experience. Some reviewers feel the base game is unplayable without mods. - Poor traffic AI, congestion issues (weight 0.23): Many reviews criticize the game's traffic AI, citing illogical routing and congestion issues. Players find traffic management frustrating and often require mods to address these problems. Some reviewers feel the game becomes primarily a traffic management simulator. - Sequel inferior to original (weight 0.13): Some reviewers feel that Cities: Skylines 2 is a step backward from the original game. They cite missing features, simplified mechanics, and performance issues as reasons for their disappointment. Some reviewers recommend against playing Cities: Skylines 2 at the moment. - Modding instability, save corruption (weight 0.07): The game experiences save file corruption and mod incompatibility issues. Updates frequently break mods, and accidentally overwriting mods can destroy cities. This can lead to lost progress and frustration for players who rely on mods. - Frustrating road building mechanics (weight 0.06): Road building can be frustrating due to automatic bending, limited rotation, and conflicts. Precise construction is difficult, and roads cannot connect at certain angles without mods. This can make city planning challenging and lead to chaotic layouts. - Game has stability bugs (weight 0.04): The game has bugs that can severely affect the experience, forcing players to find workarounds or restart their progress. Numerous compatibility issues prevent the game from launching or cause crashes, severely impacting the gaming experience. Some bugs have been present since launch and remain unaddressed. - Demanding, complaining citizens (weight 0.04): Citizens constantly complain about various issues, such as traffic, garbage, and lack of services. This adds to the challenge of city management and can be frustrating for players. Limited interaction with citizens and disorganized feedback can also be a problem. - Outdated graphics, engine (weight 0.03): The game's styling is beginning to show its age, with outdated graphics and long loading times. The graphics may not appeal to all players, and the level of detail is inferior compared to the second installment. The game remains full of bugs after 10 years. Gameplay feedback: - Challenging traffic management (weight 0.39): Traffic management is a central challenge, requiring players to design efficient road networks and public transportation systems. Realistic traffic simulation demands constant adjustments and strategic planning to alleviate congestion. Some reviewers feel it is the core gameplay. - Economic and budget management (weight 0.37): Players must carefully manage the city's economy by balancing income and expenses, setting tax policies, and providing essential services. Strategic thinking and patience are required to maintain financial stability and citizen happiness. Early mistakes in planning can lead to financial ruin. - Resource and infrastructure management (weight 0.36): Players must strategically manage essential resources like electricity, water, and waste to ensure the city's functionality and sustainability. Balancing resource consumption with environmental concerns adds a layer of complexity to the gameplay. Infrastructure management is key to a thriving city. - Sandbox, no story, easy-to-learn (weight 0.06): The game lacks a traditional story or campaign, focusing instead on a sandbox experience. While the mechanics are easy to pick up, mastering the game's complexities requires experimentation and learning through failure. The game is primarily a single-player experience. - Isolated game mechanics (weight 0.06): These points describe specific game mechanics, features, or strategies, but lack broader context or analysis. They are often isolated observations without clear implications for the overall gameplay experience. - DLCs add content/challenges (weight 0.04): DLCs add new challenges, such as natural disasters, and expand gameplay possibilities, but some content is locked behind DLCs. Some reviewers feel the base game is incomplete without the DLCs. Some DLCs evolve into management simulators instead of expanding city-building possibilities. - Moddable with varied game modes (weight 0.03): The game offers both vanilla and modded gameplay, with mods adding depth and aesthetic variety. The game also features varied game modes, including Free Mode, Challenge Mode, and Sandbox Mode, catering to different player preferences. - Individual player experiences (weight 0.02): These points describe individual player experiences and preferences, but lack broader applicability or actionable insights. They are specific to the reviewer's playstyle and do not offer general feedback on the game's mechanics or design. - Average grind level (weight 0.02): The game has an average level of grind, or no grind at all, depending on the player's approach. - Citizen simulation and happiness (weight 0.01): The game simulates individual citizens with unique lives, jobs and concerns. The game focuses on increasing the happiness of the citizens by providing better jobs for educated people. Performance notes: - Hardware impacts performance significantly (weight 0.21): The game's performance is highly dependent on hardware, with significant FPS drops and slowdowns occurring in large cities, especially when using mods or high settings. Some players report needing high-end PCs to maintain playable frame rates, while others note optimization issues even on newer hardware. Some reviewers noted that the original Cities: Skylines had better optimization. - Game is memory-intensive (weight 0.18): The game is memory-intensive, requiring significant RAM (16-32GB recommended) for large cities, custom assets, and mods. Insufficient RAM can lead to crashes and long loading times. The game and its associated files can also take up a significant amount of drive space, especially with mods and DLC. - Graphics are acceptable, not revolutionary (weight 0.02): The graphics are generally considered acceptable or nice, but not revolutionary. Some reviewers suggest that the visual experience can be improved with mods. - Runs well on specific hardware (weight 0.02): The game runs well on some specific hardware configurations, such as the Steam Deck and Macbook Pro M3 Pro. This suggests that optimization may be better for certain systems. - Clipping issues persist (weight 0.01): Some players continue to experience clipping issues even after removing or updating mods. This suggests that the issue may not be solely related to mods. Recommendations: - Highly recommended city-building simulator (weight 0.86): The game is highly recommended as a top-tier city-building simulator, praised for its depth, creative freedom, and engaging gameplay. Many suggest it's better than its successor, especially with mods. Some reviewers suggest waiting for a sale, but overall, the game is considered a must-have for fans of the genre. - Mods and DLC enhance experience (weight 0.52): Many reviewers recommend using mods to enhance the game, fix issues, and expand gameplay. Some DLCs are recommended, but not essential, and it's suggested to wait for sales due to the cumulative cost. The modding community keeps the game fresh and addresses limitations. - Buy on sale (weight 0.06): Many reviewers recommend waiting for a sale before purchasing the game and its DLCs. The game is worth the price, especially when it has good sales. - Technical issues reported (weight 0.04): Some reviewers have experienced technical issues, such as game crashes and black screens. One reviewer recommends buying the game on Epic Games instead of Steam. Other player notes: - Broad audience, infinite playtime (weight 0.07): The game appeals to a broad audience, including kids, teens, adults, and even older players. Many reviews mention the game offers long play sessions and an almost infinite playtime, suggesting high replayability and long-term engagement. - City-building simulation with depth (weight 0.06): The game is a city-building simulation, often compared to SimCity, where players manage various aspects of a city. It can teach players about city infrastructure and planning, and some find it helps them appreciate or critique real-world urban design. - Workable size, large content library (weight 0.04): The game's file size is considered manageable, and the world area is substantial. The Steam Workshop provides a large amount of additional content, further expanding the game's size and scope. - Base game affordable, DLCs expensive (weight 0.03): The base game is reasonably priced, but the numerous DLCs can become expensive. Some reviewers suggest the expansions are optional and primarily for supporting the developers or adding bonus content. - No story or narrative present (weight 0.02): The game lacks a traditional story or narrative component. The focus is primarily on city-building and management rather than a story-driven experience. - Mixed, vague feedback (weight 0.02): This cluster contains mixed and vague feedback. Some find the game good, while others are surprised by its high rating or find it emotionally unengaging. The presence of minor bugs is also mentioned. - PC only, flexible play sessions (weight 0.02): The game is available only on PC and supports both controller and keyboard/mouse input. The game is suitable for both long and short play sessions. - Requires strategic city planning (weight 0.01): The game requires strategic planning, such as allocating development directions for industry, population, and offices. Efficient infrastructure, like cargo train stations, is crucial for preventing congestion. - Second installment is available (weight 0.01): A second installment of the game is now available. This may influence players' decisions on whether to invest time and resources into the original game. - Low grind level (weight 0.01): The game has an average grind level, with some reviewers stating there is nothing to grind in the game. This suggests that the game does not require repetitive tasks to progress. - Two deluxe edition versions (weight 0.01): There are two versions of the deluxe edition available. The 'Cities: Skylines - Deluxe Edition' includes the soundtrack, digital artbook, and 5 historical monuments. Emotions: No emotions}