Cities: Skylines

Gameplay

Nagpo-focus ang Cities: Skylines sa city-building simulation sa pamamagitan ng urban planning. Kinokontrol ng mga manlalaro ang zoning, paglalagay ng kalsada, pagbubuwis, mga publikong serbisyo, at publikong transportasyon ng isang lugar. Open-ended ang gameplay, na-tout na "endless sandbox gameplay across massive maps." Player-determined civic policies can affect the development of the entire city or individual districts thereof. Compared to the Cities in Motion series, Cities: Skylines also features a more streamlined traffic designs whereas Cities in Motion "was about pure transport management".
Cities: Skylines uses a population tier system, requiring the player to obtain certain population levels to be able to access new city improvements such as schools, fire stations, and waste management systems, tax and governing edicts, and other features to manage the city. One such feature enables the player to designate parts of their city under certain types of developments, such as agricultural or clean energy as to drive the type of industry the city specializes in. Buildings in the city have various development levels that are met by improving the local area, with higher levels providing more benefits to the city. For example, a commercial store will increase in level if nearby residents are more educated, which in turn will be able to allow more employees to be hired and increase tax revenue for the city.
Roads can be built straight or free-form and the grid used for zoning adapts to road shape; cities need not follow a grid plan. Roads of varying widths (up to major freeways) accommodate different traffic volumes, and variant road types (for example roads lined with trees) offer reduced noise pollution or increased property values in the surrounding area at an increased cost to the player.
Modding, via the addition of user-generated content such as buildings or vehicles, is to be supported in Skylines; the creation of an active content-generating community is an explicit design goal. This content will be available for download from the Steam Workshop.

Development at marketing

Nais ng Finnish developer na Colossal Order na gumawa ng larong may broader na scope kaysa sa kanilang transportation-focused na larong Cities in Motion for some time, but could not initially secure funding from publisher Paradox Interactive. Cities: Skylines was announced by Paradox on August 14, 2014 at Gamescom while in the alpha stage of development. The announcement trailer emphasized that players could "build [their] dream city," "mod and share online" and "play offline"—the third feature was interpreted by journalists as a jab at SimCity, which initially required an Internet connection during play. Skylines uses an adapted Unity engine with official support for modification. In early September 2014, a release between the first and second quarters of 2015 was estimated; Colossal Order expects to continue development on Skylines after its initial release. On February 10, 2015, a trailer announced the release date as March 10.

Reception

Reception towards Cities: Skylines has been overwhelmingly positive, with an overall Metacritic Metascore of 89. When the game was first announced, journalists perceived it as a competitor to SimCity, describing it as "somewhat…the antidote to Maxis' most recent effort with SimCity" and "out to satisfy where SimCity couldn't." A EuroGamer article touched upon "something of a size mismatch" between developer Colossal Order (then staffed by nine people) and Maxis, and their respective ambitions with Skylines and SimCity. IGN awarded the game a score of 8.5 and said "Don’t expect exciting scenarios or random events, but do expect to be impressed by the scale and many moving parts of this city-builder."