Cities: Skylines
2015 · Colossal Order
Has it aged?Why ↓
Cities: Skylines is an overhead city-builder where you're the mayor, laying roads, zoning neighbourhoods and keeping water, electricity and rubbish collection working. Building your imaginary metropolis is satisfying; discovering that your road layout stops essential deliveries is where the attractive model becomes a properly absorbing problem.
Cities: Skylines is a modern take on the classic city simulation. The game introduces new game play elements to realize the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city whilst expanding on some well-established tropes of the city building experience.
The publisher’s description, from its Steam store page.
What it looks like
the trailer, then the store's own shots
The verdict
Play it for the pleasure of designing a city, then making your own design work. Its lasting appeal is the control over streets and district policies, not the rather anonymous architecture. The 2017 Mass Transit expansion makes tracing congestion and connecting public transport the strongest reason to keep tinkering. Repeatedly extending water pipes is still dull work; this is a city you improve because you care about it, not because every new block brings an exciting challenge.
Play it if
You enjoy drawing neighbourhoods rather than copying an efficient grid, then watching commuters to work out where a bus route or junction should go. You'd happily rebuild an intersection to keep deliveries moving.
Skip it if
You need the game to supply compelling goals once your city is functioning, or you cannot tolerate laying utility connections repeatedly as it expands. Roads and infrastructure aren't preliminaries you finish before the interesting part.
Common questions
- What does Mass Transit add beyond more vehicles?
- The 2017 Mass Transit expansion adds monorails, ferries, blimps and transport hubs. Alongside its release, traffic-route views and more precise road-building tools made it easier to trace where vehicles travel and diagnose a jam.
- Does Snowfall give every city changing seasons?
- The 2016 Snowfall expansion supplies three permanently frozen maps, not a seasonal cycle. Their extra demands include heating infrastructure and snow clearance; trams are another addition.
- Does Cities: Skylines require an always-online connection?
- No: the original game supports offline play. It also supports mods through Steam Workshop.
- Did development of the original Cities: Skylines end in 2023?
- The roadmap concluded in 2023, but additional content arrived in 2024. In 2026, Paradox announced the Race Day expansion and a free update with roadside fences and an Employment Info View, scheduled for 10 March 2026.
What everyone else said
we link, we don't reprintHas it aged?
How does it hold up today? Based on recent reviews, how opinions have changed since launch, player activity and updates.
% positive each month, last 4 years.
Reviews via Steam ↗Peak: 26k in Mar 2015.
Player counts via SteamCharts ↗A little less liked than at launch, but still well liked.
Updated within the last year, so still looked after.