Cities: Skylines

In Cities: Skylines, much like in most city-building games, the player's primary task is to construct their own city. This involves planning zoning areas, laying out roads, managing taxation, organizing city services, and public transportation. Throughout this process, the player must maintain the city's budget, population levels, health, happiness, employment rates, environmental pollution (air, water, and soil), traffic flow, and other factors. The game begins with a 4 km² (2x2 kilometers) plot of land, a small amount of money, and a set of initial planning tools. The map represents a land area with potential access to the sea or other water resources. It already includes major highways and railway lines, through which new residents will arrive in the player's city. The player designates zoning areas (residential, commercial, office, and industrial districts) and organizes the layout of roads, water pipes, sewage systems, and electrical grids. As the city develops and the population grows, new buildings (such as schools, hospitals, police and fire stations, and landfills) and tools (such as expense and revenue management, and district creation) become available. Using district creation and management tools, the player can combine parts of the city into unified districts and apply various policies to these districts (for example, supporting small businesses or increasing taxes for residents). Industrial districts can be specialized in different areas (such as agriculture, ore mining, etc.). In newer updates, residential, commercial, and office zones also gain new specializations (such as self-sufficient homes for residential zones, buying and selling natural products for commercial zones, and specializing in high-tech for office zones). Buildings in the city have different levels of development, which increase when certain requirements are met (such as improving service quality, education or healthcare levels, or land value). As the city expands, the player can purchase adjacent plots of land to continue construction. To facilitate the movement of residents in a large city, the player can create a public transportation system (including buses, trolleybuses, trams, monorails, airships, ferries, and metro). The player's city can be connected to other cities in the state via railway, air travel, or sea transport, which promotes trade development and tourist inflow. The game is open to modifications—it includes an API for creating mods in C#. Users can add new building and transportation models and modify the gameplay process (such as increasing the allowable game area, changing the game view to first-person, or automating certain game elements). Like most games in this genre, Cities: Skylines does not have a specific end goal, allowing the player to develop their city without any time constraints.