That’s why, ahead of Cities: Skylines’s fifth anniversary, I’m pleased to provide you readers with a guide to the best, the worst, and the ugliest aspects of this game.

(Just one more round before bed… wait – it’s 6 am?) Plus, I’ve managed to find it even more addicting than Civilization V – which, as veterans know, might be the most common cause of accidental all-nighters. And indeed, by the end of the year, I had purchased the game and spent much time on it, working on my very first city.įour years and more than 1000 hours later (rookie hours, I know), I can happily announce that Cities: Skylines remains at the top of my list of favourite games for all time. So, when my friends introduced me to the game Cities: Skylines in the fall of 2015, I immediately knew that this would be the game for me. Perhaps it gave me a sense of escapism from reality or a sense of responsibility as a creator, an artist, or someone in charge or just because laying down those roads and building the neighbourhoods was simply addicting to my young, growing mind. Besides the standard games on Miniclip and Coolmath that shaped my pre-tween years, the first flash games that I played included indie efforts at imitating SimCity games: laying power cables, water pipes, and roads zoning residential, commercial, and industrial zones and designating special areas for parks and recreation.įor me, there was just something about building livable cities that had everything a city required.

If I look deep enough within my house, I can probably find bundles of city maps, complete with streets, bridges, buildings, rivers – all drawn by my own hand.

I’ve always been a fan of urban planning and city-building games since I was a boy.

Cities skylines guide