With the redistribution of Electronic Art’s Maxis office into their other sites, fans of city simulator games are left wanting more, a better way of gaming and being involved in the everyday life of e-living. A small Finnish company that established itself in 2009 called Colossal Order has brought the solution to that craving and it’s called Cities: Skyline.
Colossal Order in general is known for their two games, Cities in Motion 1 & 2 which are simulation games that are transport driven; players get to control the comings and goings of the public transport systems within cities. Colossal Order has built upon that idea and expanded it so players can build and control cities. However, it’s not just pre-made cities, players can mod the buildings and even the terrain.
You may be wondering how the players will be managing an entire city well the CEO of Colossal Order, Mariina Hallikainen spoke to Wired.co.uk in an interview about Cities: Skyline‘s day to day and they said:
“The economy is all about the tax income. How you play determines what people are willing to pay in taxes. Let’s say you’re building a city like Abu Dhabi, if their are oil resources on the map, you get a nice income if you favour the oil industry. It might not be making the people who live there extremely happy, but on the other hand they’re still working there. For a tourist economy, it’s about making your city attractive, increasing the land value, making sure the public transport works so that people can come in. How you’d get money from tourists would be if the high-density commercial areas are doing well, they are more willing to spend.
It comes down to which area are you favouring. Low density residential is for families, they appreciate certain services but as they get older, they start to want healthcare and similar services. There’s still a lot of work to be done on that, this is requiring a lot of hours for the balancing and testing!”
Hallikainen also states in the interview that they purposely ensured that the game was a single player game. They state: “No, this is a single player game, as I think it should be. I mean, I don’t want anyone coming to MY town! It’s all about you being mayor.” Hallikainen also go on to state that because Steam is a community, how your city is developing can be shared so you can brag about its success and because its part of a community, there are mods and maps that can be shared with other Steam members.
To learn more about this game, please visit the game’s website where you can also purchase it. Cities: Skyline can also be found on Steam. For the full interview with Colossal Order with Wired.co.uk please go here. If you’d like to know more about their transportation games, you can find it here.
With all of the possibilities that come with this game, the sky is truly the limit.