Cities: Skylines new After Dark expansion introduces a day-night cycle, evening entertainment, and increased crime rates to the popular city-sim.
Cities: Skylines has already proven to be a phenomenal city-building game to the point of surpassing the more recognizable SimCity. But Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order haven’t finished with it yet – now it’s time to focus on the night life. Cities: Skylines‘ first official expansion is After Dark, which mixes up your development plans with a day-night cycle and new nighttime city services.
As we all know, major cities don’t go to sleep just because the work day ends. Players will now have to account for the night life of their cities, building clubs which provide evening entertainment while maintaining bus and taxi systems. But it’s not all fun times – crime goes up at night as well, so you’ll need a well-funded police force to keep everything in check.
“Taking the cities from daytime to night is not as simple as one might think,” lead designer Karoliina Korppoo wrote in a developer’s diary. “While the change from day to night is visually stunning, there’s much more going on under the hood. Each and every building in the game received a new texture layer to have the windows light up nicely. In addition there are new lighted signs, neon signs and other lights to make the city look interesting during the night. The sun rises and sets, painting the sky with bright colours, you can see the moon and stars move across the night sky.”
It appears that Colossal Order is putting just as much attention to detail in After Dark as the core game. You can even manage a separate nighttime budget, or institute evening bus routes which better serve reduced traffic. Cities: Skylines fans have a lot to look forward to here, and can play for themselves on Sept. 24, 2015.
