You can also choose to specialise in three different types of farming: agriculture, animal husbandry, and the more specialised field of forestry.Īs you progress, you can sign up for new contracts, earning more money to buy better equipment, or sell your soul to evil bankers by taking out a loan. The game’s system requirements are pretty high, though, so check before you buy.Īs you plunge into the main game, you can create your farmer character (with a variety of gender and ethnicity options available) and start your first farm in one of three different locations around the US and Europe. There are also some good expansion packs available, such as the After Dark pack that lets you develop your town’s night-life, and the recent Natural Disasters, which will see how you manage to cope when the town is hit by a tidal wave or even a meteor strike from the sky. But if you’re already a fan of city-sim games then you’ll find that the sheer detail and control provided by Cities: Skylines will provide a real challenge. Our only real complaint is that the game could use a more thorough tutorial to help complete beginners. You can even put roads underground to avoid spoiling an area of natural beauty – although you’ll need to make sure your underground roads don’t collide with metro trains down there as well. Larger roads can cause pollution, and lower property values, so you have to think carefully about where you build them. As people arrive you’ll need to start ‘zoning’ the town, allocating areas for housing and businesses, and also providing essential services such as water and power.Īdmittedly, the format of the game isn’t drastically different to that of SimCity, but Cities: Skylines puts a lot of detail into systems such as transport as you’re building things up. Then you create some simple roads to connect you to the outside world and wait for people to come flocking to your little homestead. Like its Sim rival, Cities: Skylines starts you off with a blank slate, allowing you to choose various plots of land, each with differing resources and geographical features, such as rivers, lakes and forests. However, Finnish outfit Colossal Order, has managed to carve its own niche in this popular genre with Cities: Skylines. Electronics Arts has had the city-building genre pretty much sewn up for years, with the popular

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