Cities Skylines 2 is still struggling, and it’s not quite the city-building sequel that a lot of players might have wanted. But the original game, from all the way back in 2015, remains perhaps the best in the genre, at least since the disappearance of SimCity. Fluid, simple, but deceptively complex, Cities Skylines 1 is also intuitive and great looking. Manor Lords and Frostpunk 2 might be the en vogue builders for now, but CS1 remains the best all-rounder. To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Colossal Order has just launched a whole-new way for you to access all 65 of Cities Skyline’s DLC packs – and the base game is going free to play for a short time.
Given its other qualities, this might be a strange thing to admire, and I admit that I’m no hardware expert. But a decade since it was released, I still can’t help but be impressed by how smooth and quickly Cities Skylines runs, even on a modest setup. It’s a huge city-building game with a detailed simulation, but it also feels totally accessible, not just because of its optimization, but also the interface, the clarity, and the clean, readable visuals. This, surely, is the secret to the genre: combining complex mechanics and systems with approachable controls and functions.
The big new Cities Skylines 2 update feels like a major step toward reviving the sequel, but Colossal Order is still giving love to the original. For starters, Cities Skylines 1 is now completely free to play, from Thursday March 20 until Monday March 24. You can get it on Steam. But if you decide to keep going after the free period, the Cities Skylines subscription service has also recently launched.
With a whopping 65 DLC packs, it might be hard to know where to start with expanding Cities Skylines 1. But from now on, you can get access to all of that extra material for a single monthly fee. The Cities Skylines subscription is available for $9.99 / £8.50 a month.
As well as all the existing DLC packs, so long as you remain subscribed, you will also get access to any new material that Colossal Order releases. That includes the two new content creator packs, Countryside and Emerging Downtown, that will be released on Tuesday March 25. “If there’s continued interest,” Colossal Order says, “we are open to bringing even more content in the future.”
Naturally, this is a good time to get the best Cities Skylines mods. Otherwise, perhaps sample some of the best building games on PC.
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