I love Cities Skylines. It’s a wonderful little city builder game which requires you to keep on top of your building and assigning of areas, as well as leading to eventually being able to plan ahead your cities as you build. Of course, it’s also very well supported by its community in mods on the Steam Workshop as well which is a big plus for most people (I only have one mod installed myself – a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria skin for the low-density retail buildings). Now Paradox have released the first DLC for the game entitled After Dark.

The big thing to note is that despite its title you don’t actually need to get the After Dark DLC if you want a day/night cycle in your cities. That bit came in a free update and my god does it look pretty.

The DLC itself adds a number of things into the game, mainly based around three areas: specialisations; transport and crime.

The new specialisations are in both the commercial areas of the game. It’s now possible to specialise your commercial areas in either leisure or beach-focused tourism. The leisure specialisation will act like normal commercial areas during the daytime but during the nighttime will see a massive increase in activity, while the beach-focused commercial areas can be assigned to commercial areas built along the shoreline of an ocean.

Transport wise there’s been the addition of a new type of transport: taxis as well as bus and bike lanes. Taxis originate from a Taxi Depot and can rest at nearby Taxi Stands if they’re closer, picking up passengers where they’re called to and also from stands. The bike lanes are a new form of path that can be found included with the paved path and gravel path when you unlock the parks, and bus lanes can now be included in roads that are built. There’s also the addition of a new big Bus Terminal where many buses can converge to pick up passengers.

Crime has seen a big overhaul, with a new stat being added to show the amount of criminals being detained at a time. While the former police buildings do have some jail capacity, the new Jail building is necessary for the detainment and reform of caught criminals during their sentences.

Playing it through, the new additions to the game are nicely implemented without taking away anything from the core game that I loved. The most noticeable bit was the day/night cycle admittedly but being able to set up new ways for my citizens to move around the city is always a good thing because inevitably there will always be a point where the traffic jams are mounting up and you need to get people off the roads or into using public transport. Buses have always been a big issue for my games, so it’s nice to be able to at least streamline some of that part with the new Terminal although it doesn’t fully sort that problem out. Mind you, the challenge is to figure that out yourself so that doesn’t put me off at all.

The fun of Cities was always to build a city that works. After Dark brings some new solutions to the equation as well as a few new issues to solve. It adds to the game rather than replacing or taking away something and that is basically what a DLC should do. And for £10.99 / $14.99 it’s not too steeply priced either. Right now the base game is 50% off until tomorrow, so it’s never been a better time to get into the game if your interest has been piqued.

8/10