A Flood of 30-Minute Teases
Cities: Skylines 2 can’t come fast enough. I’m still loving Starfield, a great deal more than I thought I would, but I’d drop it in a hot second given the chance to play Cities: Skylines 2 for myself.
Or, as it turns out, to watch one of the many (seriously, there are tonnes of) content creators who have been given early access to the game and the ability to publish a video that is no longer than 30 minutes and goes no further than the forth city milestone. Well- they’re allowed to play in the fourth milestone but must stop before hitting the fifth.
I have watched… a lot of these now.
Some might even say too many.
I wouldn’t say that, but some.
What has delighted me is the fact that each content creator brought something just a little different. Be it a different focus on the tools available, a different preference in where to spend development points, or heck- even a different philosophy on a whole way of building or playing.
Now… I’m not going to put in all the videos I watched… Because that would be both impractical and perhaps a little embarrassing. But! I will put forward at least enough that, should you watch them, YouTube will likely still gain the belief that you want nothing but Cities: Skylines 2 content for the next little while.
City Planner Plays: Recreating a Real Master Planned Suburb
For Cities: Skylines, I learnt to always place my water pipes below the roads — because that’s where they belong. I mean- I learnt other things too, but that one… That one really stuck. Cities 2 takes the liberty of doing this for you though, with most non-highway roads coming complete with piping and underground electricity cabling built in!
Biffa Plays Indie Games: Journey to the Future of City Building!
Biffa also holds a bit of a special place in my heart. It was his series dealing with fixing nightmare traffic in player-submitted series that taught me so much about what to do and what not to do in this regard.
Before encountering Biffa my cities would frequently reach a point where traffic would become their downfall and I’d put the game away again for a while. Amongst other things, I learnt that roundabouts are life — and now they’re also part of the base game experience!
YUMBL: Starting a City
Yumbl I found relatively late into my interest in Cities: Skylines — and where he excels is in the more technical aspects of building. If you’re looking for help designing an intricate but also efficient highway interchange — chances are, Yumbl has you covered.
While nothing quite that far advanced in this introduction video — you can see signs of this leaning, with Yumbl being the only (that I saw) person to cover off some of the new zoning desirability mechanics regarding low density vs. higher density relative positioning.
Infrastructurist: Starting a Realistic City from Scratch
Infrastructurist was new to me, recommended fresh from the YouTube algorithm — clearly a bit of a smaller channel, but I really enjoyed his build approach.
It probably helped that he chose to use trams though. Trams are great. And they look so much easier to use this time around, being able to upgrade existing roads to also have a tramline on them rather than having to use very select, specific roads! \o/
Let’s Game it Out: This is What Happens When You Elect a Psychopath as City Mayor
And here’s something completely different to wrap up with. Jeromai mentioned Let’s Game it Out several years ago now, and it has been a channel I’ve enjoyed dropping back into fairly regularly in the intervening years.
Hats off to Paradox for allowing their brand-new baby to be shown off publicly in this way. Hah.
It’s still a fair wait for Cities 2, October 25th by NZ reckoning. Just that right mix of ‘actually, that’s pretty close’ but also ‘Ugh, so long’ to really drive the spike of insanity into your brain.
Almost there! Almost there…almosttherealmost…there…
What? No. I’m fine. *cough*
