PlayStation 4 sales have become as regular as the console's noisy fan these days. And Sony is kicking off October with yet another set of digital bargains that includes a number of tent-pole titles. 

Fifty-two games are currently on sale until Wednesday, October 14 through the "Games of a Generation" promotion. Highlights include Ghost of Tsushima, Borderlands 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dying Light, Far Cry New Dawn, MGSV, and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. 

Savings are between 25% off and 85% off for select titles. Some of the games on offer are bundles as well, increasing the savings even further. 

Here's a full, alphabetical list of what you can find over on the PlayStation Store. 

Games on Sale

Add-Ons/DLC on Sale

That's everything on sale during Sony's Games of a Generation promotion. As if there wasn't already enough to play — and even more on the horizon in October and November — this promotion gives fans yet another chance to nab the games and DLCs they've missed out on. 

If the past is any indication, there will be plenty more sales in the future, though, for those setting money aside for a PlayStation 5. Stay tuned for new on those future sales as we learn about them. 

Mod Compatibility Checker

Download it here

Sometimes you'll download mods that just don't cooperate well with one another, causing your game to crash or mods to stop working properly — or stop working altogether.

The Mod Compatibility Checker is a piece of software that checks if there are any conflicts between mods in your load order, and then it generates a report of which ones aren't working well with others. Unfortunately, it doesn't fix incompatibilities for you, but at least you won't have to go poking around to figure out what's causing your game to stop working.

That's our list of the 10 best Cities: Skylines mods to check out on PC. For more future Cities: Skylines content, stay tuned with GameSkinny!

Traffic Manager: President Edition

Download it here

By default, Cims don't exactly know how to handle themselves in heavy traffic. The basic AI isn't particularly smart, which can lead to inefficient use of city infrastructure that causes congestion on major thoroughfares.

Traffic Manager: President Edition is a mod that gives you far more tools with which to direct traffic, but it's highly customizable as well, giving you more control over how your Cims behave in traffic in the first place. It comes with an Advanced AI framework as well, which helps each Cim make better choices without you needing to lift a finger.

Snooper

Download it here

If you're curious about where each Cim in your Cities: Skylines city is coming from, going to, where they work, where they live, and even what socioeconomic class they belong to, then Snooper is the mod for you.

This mod does all of the above (and more), delivering a dossier of information on any Cim you click on. This also ties property to Cims, meaning that you can quickly figure out who owns certain vehicles or buildings throughout your city.

Real Time

Download it here

Time lapses quite strangely in Cities: Skylines by default. The mod Real Time fixes all of that, placing your entire city, and its denizens, into a much more realistic time schedule.

But that's not all it does. You can customize the time schedule in the menu, and you can even change the likelihood that specific types of commuters will visit locations (such as home, work, school, or 'out' destinations like shopping centers and tourist traps) at different points throughout the week.

Move It

Download it here

If you've wanted to control the exact angles and positions of each prop and building in your city, then Move It is just the mod for you.

This mod allows you to control the positioning and placement of pretty much every single visual aspect of your Cities: Skylines city, even allowing you to drag and drop groups of multiple objects at once.

Network Extensions 2

Download it here

Network Extensions 2 vastly expands the plethora of transportation infrastructure options you can use to build out your city's transportation network.

It adds everything from tight alleyways to suburban backstreets and massive 6-lane highways and busways. If your city is lacking in pedestrian spaces, you can even use this mod to build zonable pedestrian promenades, boardwalks, pathways, parks, and more.

Precision Engineering

Download it here

If you're having issues setting up intersections and precise streets, you may certainly want to check out Precision Engineering, a mod that allows you to measure exact angles and distances between each street you lay down.

Even better, the mod works with other types of infrastructure; pipes, power lines, and other types of transportation infrastructure (like train lines) are measurable with the Precision Engineering mod.

Mod Achievement Enabler

Download it here

Steam has a pesky habit of failing to register those hard-earned trophies you've busted your pump to earn in Cities: Skylines when you have any mods activated.

The Mod Achievement Enabler solves this issue, bypassing Steam's mod authentication system and giving more freedom to players.

81 Tiles

Download it here

We have the technology. We can make them bigger, better, faster... even potentially smarter.

Well, there are plenty of ways to make your Cities: Skyline metropolis smarter, and this is not it. With the 81 Tiles mod, you now have the ability to expand your city out to 81 city tiles rather than the basic 25. Bring extra RAM and get ready to build. 

Automatic Bulldoze V2

Download it here

Are you sick of manually bulldozing burned down or condemned buildings? Do you wish the city would just take care of its own problems for once? This mod may be just the thing for you.

Automatic Bulldoze V2 does exactly what it says on the tin; when a building's former occupants can no longer live or work there, that building is returned to the vacant zone from which it came — automatically. 

Cities: Skylines certainly wins the day for most up-to-date city-building simulator in 2020, boasting one of the most in-depth and fun to play city-building experiences since Sim City 3000.

There is a plethora of Cities: Skylines DLC to check out, too, if you have the extra funds to shell out for it. If you have the Industries DLC, for instance, you can more thoroughly flesh out your city's supply chain and micromanage the types of products it exports. Likewise, the Sunset Harbor DLC includes new transport and fishing industry options.

That said, the Cities: Skylines PC community has vastly expanded the game's initial offerings with a ton of mods that are available directly from Steam Workshop and Nexus Mods. These are the 10 mods you should download and install in 2020. 

We're seeing a number of new video game showcases popping up in the wake of E3 2020's cancellation, and Guerrilla Collective is the latest of the bunch. It's a three-day-long digital showcase featuring a number of independent developers and publishers brought together thanks to Kinda Funny Games and The MIX (Media Indie Exchange).

Guerilla Exchange kicks off June 6 at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST with an introduction from Kinda Funny's Greg Miller, followed by:

• Paradox Insider (11:30 a.m. PST/2:30 p.m. EST)
• The PC Gaming Show (12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST)
• The Future Games Show (2:30 p.m. PST/5:30 p.m. EST)

All these showcases will air on Twitch and Steam.

June 7 will feature an online press event, and the last day of Guerrilla Collective, June 8, is focused on gameplay demos and developer interviews.

Guerrilla Collective is working with a number of developers, including Larian Studios (Divinity: Original Sin 2, Baldur's Gate 3), ZA/UM (Disco Elysium), Paradox (Cities: Skylines) and Good Shepherd Entertainment (John Wick Hex), among many, many others. ID@Xbox, the indie arm of Xbox, is also one of the event's sponsors.

You can sign up for more info on the Guerrilla Collective website, but the lineup information comes from Gematsu. We'll be keeping our eyes peeled for what comes out of Guerrilla Collective, so stay tuned to GameSkinny for more video game news as it develops.

The PlayStation Store is launching yet another sale today: a PS4 games under $20 sale. As you can imagine, everything on the list is under $20, and it includes a good mix of old and new classics too, ranging from Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair and My Time at Portia to Dragon Age: Inquisition's massive DLC bundle, and Star Wars Battlefront 2: Celebration Edition.

Here's some of what's on offer. The sale is live now through May 13.

That's just a portion of the PS4 games under $20 sale going on now. You can check out the full list over on the PlayStation Blog, and the sale page is on the PlayStation Store.

If nothing here piques your interest, remember the second Big in Japan/Golden Week sale is still live as well. Stay tuned to GameSkinny for more video game sales as they pop up.

Cities: Skylines just keeps growing. 

Joining an expansive list of 28 major and minor DLC packs, the latest expansion for the Paradox-developed city builder is Sunset Harbor. Like Industries and Parklife before it, Sunset Harbor brings a lot of new mechanics and buildings to the table. And though the name suggests the focus of this DLC is on the blue stuff, there's quite a bit for land and air, too. 

Starting with the oceans and working inland, the new fishing industry helps you diversify not only your goods and services but also the aesthetics of your coastlines outside of harbors and marinas. You can even dictate where fishing boats trawl by placing mini shipping lanes. 

New transportation methods, such as trolleybuses and the overground metro stations, expand your options outside of the typical services, and new transport hubs, connecting things like rail and monorail, bus and metro, mean you no longer have to build separate structures — if you don't want to.

Paradox has even added a passenger helicopter service to transport citizens to different areas and free up roads. The aviation club brings a new entertainment and attractiveness option, boosting land values in unique ways. 

Healthcare and waste management get upgrades with new facilities, too. Though the press release for the expansion is sparse on healthcare details, the expansion trailer above shows larger, more varied structures, as well as a helipad. Waste management, on the other hand, includes a new transfer facility (as Paradox says, "to increase land value") and ways to recycle wastewater. 

Finally, Sunset Harbor introduces five new maps with boreal, tropical, and temperate climates. 

The release of the latest expansion coincides with a new content creator pack, Modern Japan, and a new radio station, Coast to Coast Radio. 

Cities: Skylines is free-to-play through March 29. If you haven't yet jumped into the best city-builder on the market, it's currently on sale for $5.99, 80% off its normal retail price. All of its major DLC is on sale for 50% off. 

Green Man Gaming has had some solid sales over the past several months. Going toe to toe with Steam, Green Man often has more themed sales more often. This time around, the Scandimania sale offers savings on some of the great north's best games. 

From stealth shooters to turn-based strategy games and city builders, the Scandimania sale might not have a wide selection of games on offer, but all of them are well worth your time and attention. 

Here's are the games that are on sale, some up to 77% off. It's worth noting that there are tons of DLC packs on sale as well, many at steep discounts.

We've included the sales price and the original price of each game in the table below. We've opted to not include DLC packs because there are so many available.

Here's a link to the entire sale so you can check out the games and DLC packs for yourself. Mind that the map on the page is interactive, and you must click the country name on the map to be taken to the individual sale pages. 

Stay tuned to GameSkinny for more deals as they come available. 

While these are the seven games we'd like to see get mouse and keyboard support on the Xbox One, there are easily dozens more that would work well with more input options.

Of course, personal preference plays a large role here; most players tend to agree that Superhot actually works better with a controller than a mouse, for instance.

What games do you want to see make it to the list? Let us know in the comments section below!

Ark: Survival Evolved

You had to know this one was coming, right? Ark may have been on consoles for quite a while now, but a big portion of the playerbase first jumped in on the early access PC version and is much more used to those controls.

When you have such a sprawling, complicated crafting and breeding system like with Ark, it becomes unwieldy when you cram it all into a handful of buttons.

Keyboard and mouse input opens up Ark's options considerably, although it's worth noting the console version isn't terrible by any means. The devs even somehow managed to make Ark work fairly well with even fewer buttons on the iOS version.

Who knows what's going on with that sorcery. 

Cities: Skylines

It almost feels like we didn't need to list this one because it's such an obvious contender.

Any overhead city management sim is always going to have a smoother experience when mouse and keyboard are involved; easily scrolling with a mouse instead of relying on a control stick is always better.

The ability to quickly click options in the in-game list instead of having to scroll through them with a controller just makes the gameplay much more satisfying. That's not to mention the accuracy a mouse brings to the table; building roads can be tricky in the PC version of the game, but it's a nightmare on console. 

Bastion

This may be an older title, but it's still beloved by many and is a hallowed classic that put Supergiant Games on the map.

If you've played both versions of the game, you probably prefer the PC version over its console counterpart. That's because the weapon control scheme just works better with a mouse and keyboard.

Fingers crossed this one gets keyboard support soon so we can replay this groundbreaking title on our living room TVs. 

Divinity: Original Sin II

By and large, RPG fans absolutely adored this take on turn-based fantasy shenanigans; they even had a great time with it on consoles last year.

However, there was one nagging issue that kept me from deeming it a console classic, even if it was on PC. 

Of course, that was the lack of keyboard and mouse support.

It's beyond clear this style of game is meant to be played with a mouse and keyboard, much like a classic cRPG. The experience just changes too radically when you try to force this type gameplay onto a limited-input controller.

Wasteland 2 

All of those killer old-school, Renaissance-style cRPGs that have arrived thanks to crowdfunding have been making their way to consoles lately. There's no question that they are far better experiences when you ditch the controller.

For a tactical RPG like Wasteland 2, the ability to roll over and click on-screen elements, or to quickly tap keyboard shortcuts, is a huge part of the game's overall feel and style. There's just something lost when playing with a controller. 

Follow-up Wasteland 3 (set in the snowy post-apocalyptic Colorado landscape) will drop later this year, and if history is any indication, we can expect console versions to follow at some point. And all of those should support mouse and keyboard, especially in 2019.

There's really no excuse for them not to. 

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4

This one is a matter of personal preference, but there's a colossal crop of players who prefer playing FPS games with mouse and keyboard, primarily for increased control and accuracy. With the addition of a battle royale mode, mouse support for the Xbox One version of Black Ops 4 has become even more of a necessity.

It's obvious why Fortnite was one of the first games to receive mouse and keyboard support. If you've played both the PC and console version of the battle royale king, you know it's easier to throw up walls or use items quickly by using side mouse buttons or specific key bindings that you've set yourself instead of relying on the game's vanilla bindings.

Blackout may not have the same building aspects as Fortnite, but there are still plenty of other battle royale elements that would make this a much smoother experience with a keyboard and high-end gaming mouse.

That's not even mentioning the boon this would be for traditional multiplayer matches. 

Halo Wars 2

This one is beyond obvious. RTS games were always meant to be played with mice and keyboards in mind; console controllers were ostensibly tacked on later to varying degrees of success (anybody remember Starcraft 64?).

Players have been begging for mouse control for Halo Wars 2 since it first landed, and this seems like a title that must be in the next crop of K+M-compatible announcements.

It's worth noting that players have actually been hacking together unsupported third-party solutions for this problem since the game released, but they usually get banned when playing online, so official mouse and keyboard support would be a godsend to the player base.

The crossover event we've all been waiting for has arrived: USB mouse and keyboard support for Xbox One is finally here.

Of course, there are some caveats, unfortunately.

While you can plug any USB mouse and keyboard into the console and hope for the best, the only officially licensed device right now is the Razer Turret -- a wireless keyboard/mouse combo that runs at a whopping $249 and was low-key released during CES 2019.

That's a hefty price tag, but it definitely ticks a lot of the right boxes for those looking for a more PC-centric experience on console. Not only does it have the right green/black aesthetic to go with your Xbox One, it also brings the satisfying chunk chunk chunk sounds of a mechanical keyboard to your living room. Plus, it's got a ton of RGB backlighting options to go along with it.

The Xbox One games that support K+M controls are quite limited at the moment, with these games ready to go right out of the gate:

\n
• Fortnite
\n
• Minecraft
\n
• Warframe
\n
• Bomber Crew
\n
• Deep Rock Galactic
\n
• Strange Brigade
\n
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
\n
• War Thunder
\n
• X-Morph Defense
\n

Quite a few more titles are set to receive support in the coming months, and it seems obvious that some games are more suited for this input method than others. In particular, there are a host of games that were ported from PC and were obviously made with the keyboard and mouse control schemes in mind.

Here, we've rounded up our top 7 Xbox One games that need keyboard support, from RPGs to RTSes and beyond.

The debate over game of the year invariably involves big, AAA titles with lots of advertisement hype and Hollywood-like gross revenue numbers.

But what if I told you that my top three games of 2018 are two DLC packs and a free patch?

Specifically, they are the Holy Fury DLC for Crusader Kings II, the Industries DLC for Cities: Skylines, and the 2.2 "LeGuin" patch for Stellaris.

In choosing DLC for a game of the year vote, I feel like I should lay out some ground rules so that anyone reading this knows how to make expansion content the very best it can be.

For any developers out there, follow these simple rules and you'll have all the Frys on the internet yelling, "Shut up and take my money."

Rule 1: Breathe Fresh Life Into An Old Game

Holy Fury's biggest virtue is that it adds the Shattered and Random Worlds that were always missing from Paradox's various strategy series. When you stir up the starting parameters of the game, you take a series that was constrained by history and turn it into a lively, never-the-same-game-twice experience that almost equates to grand strategy mixed with roguelike.

Likewise, Industries fixed one of Skylines' few weaknesses; in the base game, industrial zones are almost useless once the bulk of your citizens begin working in office buildings because offices produce higher tax rates for lower crime and no pollution.

With Industries, industrial production becomes a game all its own, and the way the systems work together create a meta game that stays fun and useful well into the massive metropolis late-game.

And finally, "LeGuin" so completely revamps the way planets work in Stellaris that every strategy you had from pre-2.2 versions of the game are rendered instantly obsolete.

When a free patch does more to revolutionize gameplay than some games see with an entire suite of paid DLC, that is a massive achievement that feels like a Christmas present from the developers.

Rule 2: Provide Something For Everyone

The second rule of great DLC is to avoid couching content behind a playstyle barrier; in other words, create a DLC that's flexible, not one that alienates players that don't adhere to a specific playstyle. 

While most of the main gameplay in Holy Fury is skewed toward pagan rulers, giving them buffs to keep up with every other religion post The Old Gods, all the value here comes back once again to Shattered Worlds.

A lot of the fun in CK2 is in turning very small counties into massive empires. For a lot of players, it's simply not much fun to start as a vassal. You spend the whole early-game waiting for events beyond your control to happen so you can declare independence. But at the same time, if you start as a king, the game's often too easy with what little challenge there is coming in preventing or putting down revolts when you have the resource and army advantage.

Even if you disagree with that assessment of vassals and kings, Shattered Worlds still has something for you. The mere fact that you can break up the world any way you like (from a world with naught but one-province minors to one with completely unique kingdoms and empires) means it's never the same world twice.

No matter your playstyle, there's something in the DLC for you.

Industries is the same way in Skylines. You'll get the most out of it when you're building industrial cities, of course. But even if all you use it for quick jobs while you're waiting for offices to unlock, you're still covered.

Put simply, the new system is more fun and makes more sense than the old system in every single situation where industrial zones are involved. Every playstyle uses industries at some point during the game, so every playstyle benefits from a better system.

And LeGuin... well, you're getting those new systems unless you want to rollback to 2.1 and stay there. Every playstyle's using it whether they want to or not. It's a patch.

Rule 3: Don't Gouge. Keep Your Prices Reasonable

Holy Fury costs $20 and delivers a full game's worth of fresh content updates at that price. Industries costs $15 and fundamentally changes the game's economy for the better, changing the whole way you'll play Skylines no matter your playstyle. And the 2.2 patch for Stellaris is free; you don't even have to buy the MegaCorp DLC that it launched alongside.

Roughly half what the base game costs are a fair price for a DLC pack. Value for investment is an important component in evaluating the very best games, after all.

---

Yes, DLC can be game of the year. 

When you breathe life into an aging game, eat up a game writer's entire week to the point where he almost misses deadline getting the guide out because he couldn't drag himself away from the game for three hours to write it, and offer something for everyone?

Nothing else in gaming offered me that in 2018. Holy Fury gets the gold medal, Industries gets the silver, and a free patch for Stellaris gets the bronze.

It's a shame more people didn't consider these for gaming's highest honor. 

Over three years ago, Cities: Skylines launched, and while we put up a list of must-have mods for the game at the time, a lot has changed in three years.

Some of the essential mods, like unlimited ore and oil, have been built into the game itself as menu options choose-able at the beginning of gameplay.

Others, like some of the anti-crash and performance mods, found themselves incorporated into patches as the devs had a “why didn't we think of that?” moment when someone showed up their QA team.

And still others, like Improved Public Transit, were effectively rendered obsolete when those options showed up in DLC packs, most notably the Mass Transit expansion. And the official ones are far better (and more compatible!) than downloading a mod, so if you care about that stuff, just buy Mass Transit.

That said, the Steam Workshop is chock-full of great mods, and I'm going to mainly focus on the ones that make gameplay tweaks rather than purely cosmetic additions (content packs are great, of course, but they're not really “must-have.”)

As far as I've been able to gather, these all work with Industries, but as always with modding your game, these aren't officially supported, so if you install a mod and it breaks your game, you're on your own.

Industries Vehicle Converter

This is a nice little cleanup mod to make sure that if you're putting Industries on top of an existing city that all your vehicles come along for the ride and work with the DLC's systems.

Note that you'll need the Prefab Hook mod if you want this one to work.

Total Autobudget

Takes all the micromanagement out of making sure you have enough money allocated toward making sure the city gets the resources it needs.

Great for making sure that no excess production ends up wasted (and costing money) and likewise is a lifesaver if you're using the day/night cycle or the resource-demand systems in the After Dark or Snowfall DLC.

This is a great headache reducer.

TrafficManager

One of the best mods out there for traffic management, the newest version of the download now includes support for the vehicles and game mechanics in Industries.

Basically, this prevents those nasty traffic jams that come from AI-controlled cars not selecting lanes properly on multiple-lane roads, allows user-controlled speed limits on streets and highways, makes traffic lights make a lot more sense in terms of the relative timing for each side of a crossing, and even includes a nuclear option to just get rid of traffic entirely if the AI has made such a hash of it that there's no bringing it back through no fault (or entirely through the fault!) of the player.

If you find yourself as angry at traffic as a Seattle pedestrian, this is the mod for you.

Automatic Bulldoze (Industries Edition)

Tired of having to manually clear abandoned buildings once whatever the problem it is that spawned them gets solved, and don't want to wait for the game to wise up and make use of the building space again?

Install this handy mod and watch as no blight goes un-renewed. This will get rid of those pesky blighted buildings in a hurry so your city can get back to growing and thriving.

Or, y'know, spawning another abandoned building because you didn't solve the underlying resource problem, but hey, it's automatic, you can mess up to your heart's content!

Fallout 4 Lynda Carter Music Mod

OK, this is just here because I am an absolutely shameless Fallout fanboy. Don't believe me? Go read my review of Parklife.

Just because you're nowhere near Goodneighbor doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to hear the music, right?

Don't forget to install the CSL Music Mod in order to be able to use this one.

Fallout: New Vegas Music Mod

Look, I told you, I'm a Fallout freak. So sue me. Same advisory applies as the Fallout 4 music, make sure you get CSL Music for this.

Mod Achievement Enabler

For obvious reasons, you'll want this one if you play with mods. Making your game better shouldn't lock you out from getting those spiffy little notes congratulating you on your progress...well, unless you're using cheat mods, in which case, you filthy cheater.

But seriously, this mod is essential to preventing a minor tweak or bug fix from marking you like you're using cheat codes.

Remove Need For Power Lines

Tired of having to mess around with bulldozing power lines, cutting power to large swaths of the city, just because you're expanding in a direction those lines occupied?

Or maybe you just want to automate another part of the process that's more about micromanagement than strategy.

If that sounds like you, then this mod is for you.

There's another one that does the same thing for pipes, but pipes aren't intrusive in the above-ground portion of the game world. Power line interruptions break realism during construction, so this mod proves exceptionally useful.

Rain Firefighting

A nice realism mod, since Mother Nature often does what firefighters tap a hydrant in order to do, and she shows up without you even needing to dial 911.

Common sense mods are always nice in video games, and this is no exception.

And like in real life, if there's a fire blazing so far out of control that it's going to take more than a little drizzle to put it out, nature alone isn't going to cut it, so don't neglect your fire services.

Parkify

Why should park buildings be excluded from city parks? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it?

Well, if you've got Parklife installed and want to create parks that aren't limited to Parklife-exclusive recreation buildings, this is the mod for you.

Makes Parklife much more immersive and convenient and helps solve the problem where regular park buildings are often more efficient than using Parklife's mechanics to create city beautification.

Essential if you have that DLC.

Control Building Level-Up

You know that problem you run into where the game tries to level a building up before you're ready for it?

You know how that's especially annoying when your city is too small for the advanced services that high-level commercial and industrial buildings require, but the game wants to level you up to them? Then you get abandoned buildings for lack of educated workers?

Yeah, you can lick that problem with this mod. It's officially updated for Parklife but should work just fine with Industries.

Employ Overeducated Workers

This is the Newton's Third Law equal and opposite reaction; you have great city services, but someone ultimately has to do the grunt work.

You can just pretend these are the interpretive dance majors and the people who burned out and became video game writers with accounting degrees and the people who tried their best to find good work but ended up stuck in retail because they couldn't network.

Point is, a lot of people work jobs they're overqualified for in the real world. Now they can do it in Skylines too. So you can condemn your citizens to menial, soul-destroying, dream-crushing labor.

You monster.

In Summary...

No matter what mods you like to use, you'll find something in the Steam Workshop. And even if you prefer vanilla, there's nothing wrong with that either—but it's hard to imagine, once you've seen how a good mod can improve your experience, how you'd want to play without it.

And besides, Cities: Skylines with Fallout music is like a Reese's Cup of great tastes that go great together.

Happy modding!

The newest DLC, Industries, just released for Colossal Order's genre gold standard Cities: Skylines, and to celebrate, the game and all of its DLC except for the new one just went on sale on Steam through Thursday, November 1.

And while you may be tempted to just buy the complete game-and-DLC bundle (a more than $150 value for about 56 bucks), and you'd get a fantastic experience out of so doing, maybe you don't quite want to go whole hog right out of the box.

Maybe, instead, you're looking to keep your purchases down to the cost of a fast-food meal, but you really want to make the money count. For that, here's your guide to every Skylines DLC, from “not worth it at any price” to “buy it even if it isn't on sale, it's that good.”

Special note: I'm not including minor packs that don't make major gameplay changes. Stuff like Content Creator packs and radio stations add nice flavor to the game, but to be bluntly honest, they're really not worth spending your own money on, not when so much of that stuff is available in the Steam Workshop for free. Never send a paid content-only DLC to do a mod's job, I say.

Must-have Cities: Skylines DLCs

After Dark

After Dark isn't a mandatory because of the day/night cycle (which came with the free patch that accompanied the expansion anyway). Nor is it a mandatory because of the leisure and tourist buildings (which you may end up not using at all).

No, what makes After Dark a must-have is the overhaul of city services that it brings.

The Bus Terminal is absolutely essential to creating a large, integrated public transportation system that can serve a large city. Much like in any other city in the real world, the ability for bus lines to seamlessly converge on a central point is what makes it actually useful to the citizenry.

After Dark also introduced cargo hubs, which provide massive boosts to the city's industrial economy, especially with the Industries DLC. Even if you're not a huge fan of those yellow blocks on the map where the dirty jobs of the city get done, having them be profitable means they're not just eating space to keep demand for labor up.

It also comes with the International Airport, and if you've had a city big enough to where air capacity has become a concern, you'll know exactly what a gem this building is in the lategame.

Throw in taxi service on the roads to relieve congestion, and you see why After Dark was a complete and essential expansion that offered something for everyone. This is generally $7.49 on sale and $14.99 at full price and is the first DLC on this list well worth shelling out the complete cost of admission for.

Get it if:

You want your roads to be more efficient and you want a way to generate additional revenue streams to provide variety to your city's economy through leisure and tourism.

Miss it if:

For some bizarre reason (seriously, this DLC is absolutely essential), trying to run bigger cities with inefficient road networks somehow appeals more than having major gameplay improvements.

Industries

As the game's promotional materials put it, “mind your business” with Industries, a DLC that manages to layer a resource- and production-management RTS on top of a city builder without losing the plot in either case.

This is the DLC that actually makes the natural resources on the map useful. It cannot be overstated just how much this utterly revolutionizes gameplay.

Especially when combined with the menu setting that gives unlimited oil and ore resources rather than ones that deplete in about 10 minutes of gameplay, this is the DLC that turns industrial zones from earlygame stopgaps into true profit drivers of their own.

Even better, Colossal Order made the creation of these new-style industrial zones super easy for anyone who's played the base game, and double-especially for anyone who's played Parklife. They repurposed the existing system for drawing districts to let you build out the industrial zone exactly where and in what size you want it.

The system is not without its weaknesses, but they're awfully minor.

For one thing, there is still that great big “but what about your playstyle” question that looms over every single DLC, even the mandatories; if you're just not into having manufacturing cities and you're going to devote that real estate to building powerhouse office zones, there is nothing in Industries that demands you not do that, and there are still only so many citizens to go around in the labor pool.

For another, maybe you don't have $14.99 to burn, and this one's still brand-new so it's not getting its first sale until probably Christmas at the earliest.

But if the money won't break you, and you have any interest at all in stirring a little tycoon game peanut butter into your chocolate city builder, this is absolutely essential. Check out our review here.

Get it if:

You have any real interest in making your industrial zones into something special in terms of their value to your city's economy.

Miss it if:

Your playstyle just really, really doesn't swing toward industrial zones.

Mass Transit

Here we have the DLC that makes large cities possible and expands in every way upon the vanilla game's available tools to get cars off the road and, with another nod toward the developers' body of work, really gets your cities in motion.

From the fantastical (blimps!) to the more familiar (ferries, cable cars, and the monorail that put North Haverbrook on the map), and featuring intermodal transit hubs that let you build things like Boston's multi-transit South Station, this is the DLC that turns public transportation from a curiosity that lacks a bit in depth to a fully integrated system that gives your cities the ability to handle even Tokyo-sized traffic volumes.

There are even ropeways that can go up the sides of mountains and unlock the possibilities of spaces that used to be obstacles to development.

And it's on sale for $6.49, but the regular price of $12.99 is a bargain.

This does for Skylines what the Rush Hour pack did for SimCity 4 way back in the day. It takes a good-but-not-great part of the base game and just elevates it to levels that will make you seriously wonder how on earth you ever got along without it.

When combined with Industries and After Dark, this is the essential Cities: Skylines starter kit. The 30 bucks or so it will set you back to buy the rest of the major DLC is entirely optional, but if you haven't already looked at your wallet to see if you've got another 30 for Mass Transit, you should.

If you're still on the fence, read our review for more info on this one.

Get it if:

You have any sense in your head at all and want your public transportation to work the best that it can.

Miss it if:

You don't have the money. That's the only plausible reason.

Depends on your Playstyle

Parklife

I have mixed feelings about Parklife that showed themselves in my review of the DLC when it came out.

Specifically, building a great zoo or nature preserve or city park or Nuka-World is a great way to add a lot of visual flavor to your cities. Also, when it's done right, the park districts are a great revenue stream for the city, pulling a profit that you can then put into improving the rest of your civic infrastructure and whatnot to power a more prosperous city.

That's the real strength of Parklife: the game-within-a-game of creating the perfect park while simultaneously balancing all the other spinning plates that come with a well-balanced city.

The biggest weakness is that the park mechanics don't contribute enough to the city in terms of land value per unit cost to justify their existence unless you're building them as a profit driver. The already-existing parks-and-recreation system in the base game is better for your citizens on the whole if your sole goal is to grow your tax base, and as such there's an opportunity cost that comes in the box and wipes out a lot of the benefit.

Everything else in the DLC is in service of the parks system; there's nothing here for base game players to have any fun with the way, for example, Snowfall gave that neat-o tram system (even if it was the only thing in the DLC and largely rendered obsolete by Mass Transit—more on that later). The sightseeing buses and new reward buildings all tie back into the park system.

The DLC will run you $14.99, or $10.04 during the 33 percent off sale, and the only real way to recommend it is if you're the type of person for whom beautification and screenshot value is where you get the joy from your particular playstyle.

Get it if:

You want to create a unique look for your cities, or you enjoy having a more hands-on role in the creation of your leisure areas.

Miss it if:

You're more efficiency-oriented or don't want to add complexity to one of your city's systems without a meaningful tangible reward.

Green Cities

This one falls short of mandatory status thanks largely to the fact that it's not strictly necessary to use green building options in order to have a perfectly functional and relatively clean city. By the time you're in office-zone territory, that problem usually takes care of itself, or at worst cordons itself into “the bad part of town”.

But all the same, if you're playing the kind of playstyle where you want to create beautiful, ultra-modern, clean cities of the future, this scratches that itch in ideal fashion. For a utopian player, new building specializations, electric cars, green parks, and ability to apply eco-friendly policies to districts means there's a ton of great stuff here to be explored.

When you've got those geothermal power plants firing and the yoga gardens built, you can then gear your city toward getting the Ultimate Recycling Plant, one of the game's “monument” super-buildings, and that's the other strength of this DLC, the fact that the reward at the end is extremely useful.

The downside, as with most Skylines DLC, is that if your playstyle doesn't lean toward what the DLC is trying to offer, it's just a bunch of stuff you'll never use but that you paid $6.49 for on sale or $12.99 for at full price.

But this is where you're really starting to get into the “most playstyles can find a way to use this stuff” territory that makes DLC, especially on sale, a must-have.

Get it if:

Reducing pollution while still running an economically viable city appeals to you.

Miss it if:

You're less concerned with “green” city design and your playstyle doesn't super-prioritize reducing pollution beyond the simple maintenance levels you can achieve with basegame tools.

Don't Bother

Snowfall

Snowfall makes everything look pretty, and there is plenty to be said in favor of the challenge that adapting your city to wintry conditions offers.

The problem is that this DLC is extremely poorly executed.

For one thing, the snowfall is an all-or-nothing affair. Either brace yourself and prepare for the frozen tundra of an icy waste like the northernmost parts of Colossal Order's home nation of Finland, or else use a map that isn't Snowfall-enabled and get absolutely no value out of the DLC at all.

Sure, existing maps get rain and fog, and the Streetcar system is a nice addition to the multitude of transit options we've come to expect from a studio that made its name on the old Cities In Motion series, but you'd really need money to be burning a hole in your pocket before you dropped even the $6.49 sale price on it.

Plus, as several Steam reviewers have pointed out, the complete lack of contrast inherent in having a city covered in snow takes away a lot of the visual appeal that the game's landscapes usually have. Snow is beautiful, as anyone who loves living in cold climates knows, but it's not visually interesting the way nature tends to be during the rest of the year. You'll grow tired of it quickly.

Get it if:

You really love winter wonderlands and you have money to burn.

Miss it if:

You'd rather just go out for a burger and fries; you're not missing anything by not having this DLC installed.

Natural Disasters

Remember how in SimCity 4 (and its earlier brothers), half the fun of building a city was unleashing the wrath of Judgment Day upon it like some kind of cruel cross between the God of the Old Testament and Kefka from Final Fantasy VI?

This is the experience Natural Disasters is out to create, and if that's what floats your boat, then you'll get everything you ever wanted here.

The problem is twofold and why this DLC is just way too hard for me to recommend even for people who have a fetish for breaking stuff in a city-building game.

One, that's way too much of a one-note song even for $7.49, much less the $14.99 regular ask.

And two, as anyone who's played SimCity knows, breaking stuff is cathartic and all, but what do we all do when we get it out of our system?

We reload the save and play with the hope that the game won't break our stuff on its own volition, that's what.

And this DLC, even though it adds lovely early-warning systems and all kinds of major mechanical anti-frustration features for dealing with a disaster, is still going to throw a disaster at you unless you toggle the option off in the menu, at which point you just spent $7.49 for “I wanted to destroy something beautiful mode.”

Get it if:

You really love to destroy stuff and triggering disasters never got old for you in the old SimCity games.

Miss it if:

You'd rather build cities than destroy them.

Hopefully my experiences with Cities: Skylines and its DLCs and expansions will help you decide which you'd like to throw money at.

So you took our advice and went and bought yourself the new Industries DLC for Cities: Skylines. Congratulations, you'll be glad you did.

But instead of throwing a party for yourself, you're probably looking at all those new features like “These look fun, but what am I going to DO with all of them?”

Well, we've got you covered, so read on. This step-by-step guide will turn you into a great industrialist in no time.

Step 1: Honestly, Consider Starting A New City

While you can easily redefine existing industrial areas using the DLC's new tools, you'll probably want to have a fresh map where you have the forests and fertile lands free (e.g. not already covered by other city services or buildings).

In order to get the most efficient use out of the new mechanics, you don't want to have to do major urban renewal, so start on a blank slate and you'll be perfectly prepared for the second step.

Step 2: Examine Your Map and Make Plans

Your resources are going to determine where your industrial zones are in this brave new Skylines world, which means that everything else you're going to be building is going to be in service of your industries.

Commercial zones should be transport-accessible in the most efficient ways possible. This prevents bottlenecks that can keep finished goods from getting from the places they're produced to the places where they're sold to consumers.

Optimal Commercial Strategies

If you don't already know (read: if you're not someone that's already put thousands of hours in Cities), here are some good strategies for building your commercial zones in Industries. 

First and most importantly, remember that commercial zones, as always, act as a buffer between the pollution and crime that industry creates and the residential zones' hatred of both of those things. You can put commerce in a bit of a dingy neighborhood; you can't do the same with residential. So as always, locating the commercial zones in between residence and industry is wise.

Beyond that, though, do consider that higher-end commercial zones are going to be far more voracious consumers of your industries' output than are low-end zones. As such, you'll want to make sure that the higher-value commercial areas are located close enough, but not too close, to your top-end industry buildings while still serving the very cream of the crop of residential areas.

It's not too dissimilar to a classic basegame city layout; it's just got more layers you need to concern yourself with if you're going to make the most efficient use of the new industries.

Of course, residences are then placed as they always are, where citizens have access to their jobs and to shopping and services. That much hasn't changed since the initial base game came out.

Step 3: How To Industry in Industries

The next part of this involves actually creating these specialized industrial zones. If you've played Parklife, you'll know exactly how to start.

Draw a district over the raw resources (farming, forestry, ore, or oil) that are relevant to the industries that you're building. It's just like drawing a park boundary or a base game district.

Next, put down the main building; this will define which industrial category the entire area will produce. It's just like the park types in Parklife.

After that, you'll want to place the buildings that gather the raw materials; crop fields, logging camps, ore extraction, oil pumps, whatever is necessary for the industry you're working with.

Pro tip: If you're doing this for ore and oil, you should definitely tick on the option in the gameplay settings menu that gives you infinite oil and ore or you're just going to strip them in about 10 minutes. 

Now that you have the basics down, you'll need to start making those supply chains happen so that resources can be improved into higher-value products and those products can be sold.

Step 4: Build Stuff to Make Stuff

The next step is to start putting down Warehouses and Processing Buildings.

Warehouses simply collect raw materials to make sure that A.) they have a place where your transport vehicles can pick them up and B.), you'll have a constant supply to avoid temporary shortages in between times when the resources are being harvested.

Once that's done, that's where the processing buildings enter.

For forestry, this is the sawmill to turn logs into planed lumber. For farming, this is where raw crops become things like flour.

This is where you'll start to see a real value-add to the resources you're getting from those industrial zones.

Of course, you'll need workers for all this, so don't neglect the development of your city and education infrastructure while you're improving your production chains.

Everything is designed to fit together, remember, so you'll have a strong, granular level of control over the development of your industries that used to be at the whim of the game's sometimes kludgy upgrade system for buildings.

Step 5: What To Do With All That Stuff

At the Special Processing level, you don't necessarily have to start building “Unique Factories” yet. These intermediate products can be sold to ordinary industrial zones that aren't part of the special resource areas. Furniture factories will buy your planks, food processors will buy your flour, and so on.

But you'll eventually want to start building Unique Factories. Those are put there by the game to collect different products your industrial areas are producing to create, as the name implies, unique finished goods that are the most valuable goods of all.

Those Unique Factories produce luxury goods that can be both sold at a very high profit to your commercial zones and also exported.

In order to make use of them, you'll need a bunch of resource chains working at once; a car factory, for example, needs Animal Products (leather for the seats), Plastics (from oil), and Glass and Metals (which come from ore extraction.)

And while some of those can be imported at a cost that will reduce the profit margin, you're best off producing them all yourself.

The nice thing is that you can put Unique Factories anywhere on the map, so locating them fairly equidistant from all their resource inputs will make them more efficient.

Step 6: Sell Your Stuff!

Transport vehicles will visit your storage buildings, so make sure you've got good road connections into and out of the area where those buildings are. If you don't, you'll have massive traffic jams.

Here are some of our other guides regarding traffic and transportation that can help you out here: 

• Cities: Skylines Mass Transit Traffic Guide
• Cities: Skylines Mass Transit DLC Transport System Guide
• A Guide to Using Cargo Trains in Cities: Skylines

On the bright side, there's more to transport than cars. If you put your Warehouses near train hubs or the new Cargo Airport, you'll be able to export your goods far more efficiently and with a massive reduction in road traffic compared to trying to truck everything down the highways.

Other than that, if you've dealt with air and rail traffic before, it's the same ballgame -- just re-purposed to carry all these new goods.

This is actually the easiest part for veteran Skylines players because it uses a mechanic as old as the base game and just specializes it.

Step 7: Have Fun With The Other Stuff

Separate from the industry chains is the new DLC's mail system.

From now on, milestone Level 4 (Boom Town) now unlocks a new city service, the Post Office. Buildings generate mail, and that mail has to be delivered somewhere.

The system is similar to garbage trucks, except instead of dumping junk at the junkyard, junk mail is dumped in people's mailboxes.

About once a month, a postal van will be generated that goes around, collects mail, and exports it offscreen to one of the off-map connecting neighbors.

The system is another city service; there's really not much of a strategy to it beyond the usual keeping roads upgraded, so you can treat it like what it is.

Step 8: Level Up Your Stuff

Just like in Parklife, once your industries have produced enough and made enough profit, they'll level up.

In addition, as the city gets bigger, bigger versions of industrial buildings will be unlocked, allowing for greater production, more workers, and all that other good stuff.

The strategy here is quite simple; it's “the same, but more”, and you should be well able to figure this out as it comes up. If you've played Parklife, you already have experience with this system; if you haven't, it's basically: “This gains capacity so you don't have to build a ton of different buildings or zones, you can level up the ones you have.”

To Summarize

• Industrial districts are necessary to use the resources they're built on
• Extractor buildings extract raw materials
• Processing buildings turn them into industrial goods
• Unique Factories turn them into luxury goods
• And Warehouses enable planes, trains, and automobiles to turn them into money

Master that, and you'll have an economic boom in no time.

The most important thing to remember is that this DLC may radically change the way you actually manage your industries, but this is still Skylines, which means that ultimately, it's the same balancing act as it's always been between the needs of all aspects of your society.

But once you get it right, the amount of money it brings in means you are well on your way to having an economic powerhouse, one that will let you make use of every resource on the map to create things that until now have only been abstract ideas.

Every so often, a great game gets a great expansion DLC. In even fewer instances, that DLC improves so well upon the promise of the original release that from that point onward, it's hard to recommend new players buy the game without immediately including the DLC in their order.

Think Modern Times in Tropico 4, the downtown nightlife expansions in the Sims series, or Brave New World for Civilization V. They're indispensable parts of the games they add to because of the new mechanics they introduce.

Industries, the latest DLC for Cities: Skylines, joins Mass Transit on that must-have list.

As the name implies, this DLC completely overhauls the game's industrial system, taking mechanics that will be familiar to anyone who's already familiar with the game's districting system and using them to finally bring some real value to the four natural resources that have been part of Skylines maps since the game launched in 2015.

What's New in Industries? 

Before, you could put down an industrial district on fertile land and rely on the game to create farming industries. The same was true of trees and forestry, ores and mining, and oil and...well...oil.

With the expansion installed? You'll have a far greater level of control over the production chains those resources previously handled offscreen.

For example, if you build a forestry district, you'll first have specialized buildings -- and they're not standard industrial zones; they're actual buildings like the venues in Parklife, Skylines' previous DLC -- that create “forestry products”, which is to say logs.

Once your forestry district levels up -- and this, too, is a direct pull from the way the parks level up in Parklife, dependent on resource production and profitability -- you can start producing “planed lumber”, otherwise known as boards.

Those boards can then be transported within your city, influencing the classic zoned industry.

And Colossal Order has built a complete tycoon game into this new supply-chain mechanic. It's reminiscent of the resources in the Cities XL series or even the production chains in the classic Capitalism 2.

There are also plenty of other industry buildings -- warehouses, cargo airports, and even a post office system to turn mail into an industry unto itself -- to completely change the way the industries work in the game.

And because of the way these systems level up over the course of the game, they're not only usable out of the box, but it's actually better to plan your entire city's growth around just that eventuality. This is a DLC that scales from early- to late-game and can have a place in a variety of different city plans from the moment you're choosing a map and looking at what resources are available on it -- all before ever putting down your first building.

Another plus? Where in the past industry was something players tended to (typically) evolve away from in terms of employment options for their citizens as soon as office zones unlocked, you can now create actual prosperous industrial cities that aren't polluted disaster areas.

The high-tech production chains have profit potential that puts even the best office-and-education strategy to shame, but it comes at a cost of the game expecting players to put a lot of effort into the building and maintenance of their industrial production.

If you are any kind of Skylines enthusiast, you're going to enjoy what this DLC has to offer. Your cities will have more variety since those resources on the map will finally be worth something in terms of actual interesting gameplay options.

In addition, managing those production chains is a game within a game that makes Skylines an even deeper and richer experience than it's ever been before.

If you're the kind of person who turns off the advanced options because Skylines is already a little too complex for you out of the box, this isn't going to be your cup of tea. It will break your brain if you're not careful, and if you just don't want to have manufacturing be part of your city's economy, you can still play without it.

The Verdict

This is an absolute must-have DLC for Cities: Skylines enthusiasts. It's one of the best expansion packs to come into gaming itself in years, and it brings Skylines closer to being the ultimate only city-builder you'll ever need.

The way industrial zones will change the way your cities function and serve as the focus of a powerhouse economy turns one of the biggest albatrosses of the late-game into an integrated part of the game's overall strategy from small town to metropolis.

If you own Skylines, get Industries. It's that good.

You can pick up the Industries DLC on Steam for $14.99.

[Note: A review copy of this DLC was provided by the publisher.]

As with most things in Cities: Skylines, learning how to integrate the new mechanics and systems from the "Parklife" DLC into your city can be a case of trial and error ... mostly error.

After all, not only do you have the option to build new park types, treat them like a proper district for the first time, and play an impromptu game of Parkitect inside your metropolis, but there are sightseeing bus tours, new game mechanics involving noise reduction, a bunch of new maps, and some resources for modders.

I won't go into the modder resources; that stuff flies five miles over my head and is a subject you'll want to go to Skylines' existing modding community to get your head around. I'm a writer, not a coder or a programmer or a game designer.

Likewise, the free patch updates can best be summarized as “trees now reduce noise pollution, and the greater the concentration of trees, the greater the effect -- so plant forests between stuff like windmills and your city proper.” And new maps, of course, mean new, fun places to build cities on, all of which work just fine with other DLC, and all of which are just begging you to build a brand-new city to take full advantage of the new features.

Now then, there are two main features to get to grips with here: park districts and sightseeing tours.

Park Districts

We begin with the bread and butter. Creating a park area is as simple as drawing it in exactly the same way you draw any other district in your city:

You then choose what kind of park you want. Your choices are City Park (something roughly akin to Central Park in New York City, with walking trails, activities, and trees and such), Nature Reserve (perfect for those parts of the map where the terrain makes it impractical for zoning), Zoo (animals!), and Amusement Park (a place with all the zip of Nuka-Cola.)

Ultimately, which one you choose depends on your play style.

Once you've drawn the district, you'll need a Main Entrance; this can be found in the standard Parks interface, where you'll notice some new tabs, one for each of the different park types. Click around and experiment; Skylines is not a game that benefits from a linear “do this, this, and this” attitude. 

Main gates must have a road connection; you then build park paths to direct walking traffic through the park. You can also build side gates to allow more access points into the park, useful for preventing traffic backups near the park's main entryway.

At first, you'll only be able to place a couple of basic structures, and here is where leveling up enters into it.

Once your park reaches a certain entertainment rating and has received enough visitors, you can level it up, but you can't just plunk down a bunch of the same structure and expect it to work; there's a diminishing returns mechanic in play.

Instead, beautification matters. In a park district, trees, landscaping, and other means of making the land more attractive also add entertainment value. But the bar is set low enough that you don't need to go overboard.

Furthermore, the main gate allows you to set an admission price. The more attractive the park, the higher the price you can charge; the larger the tourist volume and population in your city, the larger the potential customer base.

Or you can make the park free and treat it as a loss leader for attracting people to other city services. The choice is again yours, but costs add up, especially in big parks and at higher levels. The game automatically raises the price for you about 20 percent at each level-up, and that seems a reasonable step size.

Policies, "Parklife" Style

"Parklife" includes policies that can be set for each park district. They work exactly the same way as district policies already in place in the game. It's precisely the same mechanic.

Policies include Animal Ethics for zoos, Advertising Campaigns to increase park visitor volume (especially useful when you've got the park up to the right entertainment value to level up but haven't quite cleared the visitor level bar), and setting a park as the Main Park so tourists prefer it, essentially saying to would-be visitors “this is why you'll want to come to the city."

There's even a park policy that improves non-DLC parks, the ones that have always been in the game, taking a bit of your treasury and satisfaction even higher than ever before.

Do you district? You know this stuff already. So have fun with it; Colossal Order made it user-friendly.

New Park Services

There's also a new building: the Park Maintenance building.

Not only does it work on the "Parklife" stuff, but it also adds a new booster to previous parks like Japanese gardens and basketball courts, giving them a boost to attractiveness as long as they're within the catchment area of the maintenance building.

But for "Parklife" buildings, the maintenance crews create a level that's on a slider in any given building's feedback to let you know how much of a bonus the object is getting.

Done correctly, this is a key part of keeping those entertainment and attractiveness values high enough to climb that level tree.

New Buildings!

Besides the maintenance building, there are also new DLC-specific buildings with their own requirements, which unlock based on what you do with your parks.

Most of them unlock at Level 6 unique buildings (the Small City milestone), and as with all other unique buildings, the game outright tells you what you need to do once you reach that point in order to complete the unlock.

The more interesting one, however, is the Castle of Lord Chirpwick; this one doesn't unlock until you've built all of the "Parklife" unique buildings, and besides nightly fireworks shows (which look awesome if you've got the day/night cycle enabled and a decent computer), it increases all other Unique Building attractiveness by 25 percent while raising the city's profile for tourists.

Lord Chirpwick offers a huge reward; if you're playing "Parklife," do everything you can to unlock the castle and make your entire purchase worth the while. Just know that it's like any other monument in the game in that you can't take your eye off the ball of making a great city to rush for it.

See the Sights!

There are two kinds of sightseeing tours: walking tours and bus tours.

They both work on the same principle, using existing public transportation mechanics; if you've created a bus line in your city, you have the know-how to make a sightseeing tour.

The difference is that unlike public transit, which is about getting people between their homes and their jobs, the value of a stop on a sightseeing tour is in the attractiveness of the landmarks you push your visitors past.

Which means if you have some well-placed parks in your city, you can line them up for people to visit them, amplifying their effect.

You can also create hot air balloons; these don't have routes, they just take to the air and view the city from above. Of course, the montgolfieres will stay in the general area of their launch pad, so if you put them near unique buildings, parks, and other high-attractiveness areas, you'll get the most satisfaction out of them.

Using these is simple and a great revenue source, and tours also improve the effectiveness of the locations they're guided past.

A New Way to Manage Tourism

Finally, Skylines has given the player a deeper dive into the data for how tourism is affecting the city.

Much like any other info panel, color-coded markers on the map show where the highest-appeal buildings are, making it easy to plan sightseeing tours around them.

Indeed, you're going to want to consult this view when you're working in that mode, because that's the only way you'll be able to visualize whether your efforts are working or just chewing through your money.

Plus, the budget panel now lets you know how much money tourists are spending and where they're spending it.

As with all things in Skylines, this is something players who have started to climb the learning curve already know; data visualization is how you stay on top of things in this game, from where the water pipes are to how hard the wind's blowing to, now, where the tourist traps are and whether any actual tourists are being trapped.

It's the glue that holds the whole strategy together, so make use of it.

But wait, there's more! The dev team added new assets clearly marked as tourism assets. Notice a bunch of campers, vans, and the like parked near your attractions? That's the game's way of telling you folks drove in just to see whatever their vehicles are parked in front of.

It's all holistic so you're not constantly in menu mode if you know what to look for.

And tourists themselves are now simulated much the same way as your Cims always have been, going about their business and able to be followed and tracked to get a good idea of their flow around your city.

Some Final Thoughts

Getting the most out of Skylines or any of its DLC involves knowing what's there, playing around with it until you get a good sense of how it works, then integrating it into your own strategy.

You can do as much or as little of this as you want, of course, but if you're paying for the content, you might as well use it.

So happy hunting! Leave a comment with a screenshot of your city's own Castle of Lord Chirpwick, and stick with GameSkinny for even more info on "Parklife" and other Cities: Skylines guides.

Cities: Skylines, arguably 2015's Game of the Year, continues to get new DLC three years after its launch, and "Parklife," the latest, seeks to blend the resurgent amusement park genre of games like Rollercoaster Tycoon and Parkitect into the classic SimCity formula that Skylines has otherwise been following since launch.

The question becomes whether this is a clever fusion of genres or whether you're essentially being asked to pay 15 bucks for content that's either superfluous, poorly integrated, or both.

And the answer to that? Well, it's the same answer as every DLC to come out for Skylines so far, and for every DLC to come out for publisher Paradox's other games that use this model, like Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV.

Repeat after me: “It depends on your playstyle.”

I loaded up a city that was fairly bog standard and still very much a work in progress (pop. 3,500 or so and just starting to expand across the freeway for the first time) and used the game's districting tool, repurposed to “create a park area,” to carve out some land like Walt Disney looking out at bare ground in Anaheim in the 1950s.

And here ... is where things got a little underwhelming.

A Place With All the Zip of Nuka-Cola

You get four broad templates to work from: City Park, Zoo, Nature Reserve, and Amusement Park.

Each has its own flavor, and Colossal Order clearly had broad city types from its previous DLCs and the basegame in mind. The Zoo and Nature Reserve in particular are supposed to appeal to the same people who got the most out of the Green Cities DLC, while the City and Amusement parks reminded me, respectively, of New York's Central Park and Disneyland.

Parks start off at the first of five levels; you build an entryway connected to the main road, then use park paths to direct people on foot through your park, building attractions, places to eat, and places to use the bathroom.

Broadly, this is the same no matter what park type you choose. The parks level up pretty much by themselves as their visitor counts and entertainment ratings increase, allowing you to charge higher gate fees (or use the parks as loss leaders to beautify and enhance the neighborhoods they're in).

They're also very pretty for screenshots, especially on higher-end computers taking advantage of the game's prettier graphics features; this effect is going to be lessened on potato-mode PCs.

At the top level, you get a cool attraction to draw more tourism into town, and the coveted “Castle of Lord Chirpwick” is Mad King Ludwig meets Skylines' not-at-all-angry bird.

The Player Style Problem

There's just one little-bitty thing wrong with all this fun:

Min-maxers and efficiency fans will hate it.

Calling up the land-value overlay shows that just plunking down a residential zone with a Japanese Garden or a basketball court will do more for your tax base and your city's ongoing maintenance costs than the DLC offers.

What's more, by the time your city is big enough to sustain the visitor traffic required to make the park into an actual revenue source, you might not want to redesign your infrastructure around a big park when you're already balancing it against a stadium or some monuments or whatever else you've already got in place from the game's leisure and land value choices.

Which leaves you with a choice: Either design your city around being a tourist haven, or stick to conventional park-building tools from the basegame. Which you'd rather do is the final arbiter of whether you'll get anything out of this DLC.

The Verdict

"Parklife" is also $14.99 US, which is full price for a game like Stardew Valley.

If you really want to dive into city beautification and quality-of-life and tourism and all that, wait for a sale and pick this up at half price. Otherwise, you can safely give it a miss.

Disclaimer: The reviewer was provided with a Steam key by the publisher.

Paradox's Cities: Skylines tasks you with developing your initially dinky city into a bustling, prosperous metropolis. Naturally, you're going to need money to do that. But what's the best way to earn money? Well, there just so happens to be several ways to do that, from balancing your zoning to properly adjusting your taxes. If you follow the steps mentioned in this guide, you'll soon be making more money than you could possibly know what to do with.

Balance Your Zoning

Proper zoning is one of the most important things to help make money early on—and for making a successful city anyway. Balance in your commercial and residential zoning is key. You don't want to crowd your residential areas with businesses or industry, and your business zones need to have enough space for trucks to deliver goods. Like any vibrant downtown, it's a good idea to have some residential areas in the midst of your commercial district, and for your residential zones, some small commercial areas for necessities like groceries and shopping can help boost profits and keep people happy.

One way to ensure the ease of movement necessary for freeing up roads and making your residents happy is by building bridges and properly implementing public transport, so citizens from your residential areas can easily travel downtown, and roads are open for delivery trucks.

Keep It Simple--At First

Tempting as it may be, don't go wild and expand your city rapidly, even once you start making more of a profit. For one thing, roads cost money to build and maintain. Also, you need to be sure you have enough in the way of resources to handle things like law enforcement and necessary services, which becomes much more difficult once your city gets bigger. So counter-intuitive as it may seem, a smaller city will attract more residents and keep them there longer.

Investment Minimalism

However, that doesn't mean you have to focus all of your resources on creating top-notch infrastructure and services for your residents. Just like in real life, a helpful way to make more money for your city is by practicing shady city management tactics at the expense of your citizens.

Tinker with how much money you pour into things like utilities or law enforcement, and make sure to check and see how much things like utilities are being utilized. Once you find the lowest level you can invest at without angering your citizens, stick with it for a while. It frees up a good deal of funds, and it's something you can continue to practice as you do expand your city.

The well-balanced city will also help you take care of some of these services itself. For example, plenty of employment opportunities that good commercial and residential zoning provides results in lower crime rates, which means you put don't have to pour as much money into police work. It also helps boost the city's economy and eventually helps ensure you have a wider range of higher paying jobs available for residents.

Another option to consider for boosting your industry without having to worry about pollution and pushing people out is to focus on things like forestry or farming until you believe you have enough income and management experience to expand into other areas without harming your progress overall.

Tax Revenue

Then you have taxes, the bogeyman of city management and all civic life. But handled appropriately, taxes can provide you substantial and long-lasting benefits. When you first start out, the tax level is set fairly low. Keep it that way for a while, until you start attracting more and more citizens. Then, start bumping the rate up. The happy zone where you can maximize your profit without driving out your residents is between 11% and 13%, depending on population size. Even when your city grows, your citizens won't demand lower tax rates and seem happy to be exploited.

Speed Things Up

This one might seem obvious, but it's worth stating anyway. Speed up time. Once you've found your happy medium of zoning, industry, taxes, and investment, speed up the in-game clock so time passes faster, and you don't have to wait for long periods of time just to reap the benefits of your management expertise.

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With everything Cities asks of you in the opening phases of the game, the goal of creating that perfect city can seem unreachable. But following these simple tips will help ensure you have all the money you need to turn your lonely outpost into a shining beacon of civilization. If you still need help, be sure to check out our other guides too!

Let us know down in the comments your preferred method of money making in Cities: Skylines!

Cities: Skylines has been around for a few years now and for the most part, Paradox has ironed out all of the game's major problems. Unfortunately, no game is exempt from random bugs, and Cities: Skylines has a pesky glitch that turns your screen pink. Although the bug is a somewhat pleasant one, the game isn't really playable in that state, so we're going to take a look at some of the ways to fix the problem.  

Check Your Cities: Skyline's Mods 

One of the biggest reasons this glitch occurs is because of compatibility issues with some of the game's mods. The most noteworthy offender is the Dynamic Resolution mod, which has since come out with an update to fix this issue. 

Make sure all of your mods are up to date, and if you're still running into the pink screen, turn off all of your mods entirely. You'll be able to start up the game with one mod at a time, until you find the cause of the problem.  

Use Launch Commands 

If the problem doesn't seem to be coming from a mod, you can try to use launch commands to fix the pink screen glitch. To run the game with launch commands, you'll need to right click on Cities: Skylines and select properties. Select the 'Set Launch Options' button and now you're ready to use some launch commands. 

There is a Steam forum thread for all of the launch commands for Cities: Skylines, but you'll want to focus on '-force-GLcore', since that one is the most likely to resolve the pink screen glitch.

These are the most likely fixes for the pink screen glitch, but hopefully, this doesn't pop up all that often anymore. The game has been updated a few times since this bug was discovered and presumably this problem has largely been fixed.  

Once you have established your residential, commercial and industrial hubs in Cities: Skylines you need start thinking about the wider picture other than just the squares you have unlocked during your game. There is potentially an infinite area out of the game that sends tourists to your city and you can trade with. But how can you set up a "trade route"? Well, for that you need to have some Cargo Trains that can move goods to and from your city.

In this Cities: Skylines guide, we are going to give you some information about cargo trains and how to establish a good cargo network that can move goods around your city and to further afield.

How to Unlock Cargo Trains in Cities: Skylines

You don't have access to cargo trains and cargo terminals instantly in Cities: Skylines. To get them, you have to reach a certain milestone. In this case, the milestone you have to reach is Small City which you get when you have a population of 10,000. This allows you to use trains in your city and unlocks the use of Train Stations and Cargo Train Terminals.

Where to Place your Cargo Train Terminal

As with all buildings in Cities: Skylines, the cargo train terminal has to be placed next to a road and have sufficient electricity and water going to it. But how you want to use your cargo network determines which zone you place the building in.

External trade

If you are wanting to send your goods out of your city and get some back in return, you could place a cargo train terminal near your industrial zone. Goods made in the factories can be put on a train directly and sent off into the "Neverland".

Internal transport of goods

If your city is spread out over a good number of squares, chances are you have a pretty extensive road network which can be prone to traffic issues. Most players will do anything to try and calm their roads down, so what if you could move goods from your industrial area to commercial and other industrial areas around your city without having to rely on roads? This is where cargo trains come into it.

If you want to set up a cargo network within your city, you will need to place a cargo train terminal in every area you want the train to go. They can be on the outskirts of an area or, if you want something more central, they can be placed directly in commercial zones. Make sure you place the terminals before you connect them with tracks.

A common problem with cargo terminals is that they can generate a lot of traffic. As freight comes in, all the trucks at the cargo terminal will come out to deliver the goods elsewhere in your city. But be aware that these goods-carrying trucks can also cause a traffic jam. The best way to counter this is to make sure you have your cargo terminal on a one-way road. That way, everything keeps moving in one direction and reduces traffic congestion.

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We hope that this little guide on how Cargo Trains work has answered any questions you may have been having. If you need more help with this game, check out the rest of our Cities: Skylines guides to make sure your city runs smoothly.

• Cities: Skylines Hydro Power Plant Guide
• Got Dead Bodies Piling Up in Cities: Skylines? Here's the Fix!
• Cities: Skylines Mass Transit DLC Transport System Guide
• Cities: Skylines Mass Transit Traffic Guide
• Cities: Skylines Mods Not Showing Up? Here's How to Fix It..

Are you like me and love city-building games? Then I'm sure you have heard of Cities: Skylines from Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive at this point. Cities: Skylines has been around since early 2015 and is one of the real contenders to stand alongside city-building giant SimCity. 

If you aren't familiar with the game and enjoy city-builders, I urge you to head over to Steam and grab yourself a copy. But which edition should you get? Which is better? You can get the Standard Edition of Cities: Skylines for $29.99 normally (though it's frequently on sale for much less). Or, for an extra $10, you can get the Deluxe Edition of Cities: Skylines. But is the Deluxe Edition worth it? Let's check it out!

What's the Difference Between the Standard and Deluxe Edition of Cities: Skylines?

As with every other Standard Edition game, all you get is the core game for $29.99. All the tools are included and you can use downloads from the Cities: Skylines workshop for a plethora of mods, but there are no other bonuses.

With the Deluxe Edition, you get the full game, as well as some extra in-game features to play with. These new additions are five famous landmarks:

• Statue of Liberty
• Eiffel Tower
• Brandenburg Gate
• Arc de Triomphe
• Grand Central Terminal

Along with these landmarks, you also get the Cities: Skylines original 14-track soundtrack composed by Finnish composers Jonne Valtonen and Jani Laaksonen. The soundtrack and extra buildings are only available via the Deluxe Edition, so if you want some added shinies for your gameplay experience, the Deluxe Edition is for you! If you already own the Standard version, you can upgrade for $10 or catch it on sale for as low as $5. 

But is the Cities: Skylines Deluxe Edition Actually Worth It?

It depends if the Cities: Skylines Deluxe Edition is actually worth it, really. How much would you like to have the listed famous landmarks in your city and a copy of the soundtrack? As the game is completely the same, that is the only question.

These landmarks give you no added bonuses apart from looking pretty in your city. You will be paying an extra $10 for no additional content or perks of any kind. In my opinion, that's not really worth it. If you want some great-looking buildings in your city, then you might be better off looking at all the Cities: Skylines mods for special buildings and features.

For more in-game content, there is an ever-growing amount of DLCs, both free and paid, that will extend your game and unveil some really fun features and customization tools. If I were you, I'd save your dollars and buy one of those instead. Cities: Skylines and all its DLCs are currently available through Steam, ranging from $29.99 for the standard edition, all the way down to a few dollars for DLCs. 

It seems like only yesterday that we were discussing the Cities: Skylines - Mass Transit DLC. But now Paradox Interactive is giving us yet another DLC for their smash-hit city building sim. The new Concerts DLC gives players the opportunity to host and manage their own outdoor concerts. With a new festival ground, festival management, and an in-game radio station, there is a lot of new content to keep you entertained.

We've drawn up this guide to show you whats what in the new DLC and how it all fits together with existing content.

How to Unlock the Festival Ground in Cities: Skylines - Concerts

It's actually relatively easy to unlock the Festival Ground -- you just need to do a bit of groundwork beforehand. The festival ground will become useable once you have reached a population of 1,000 people. So spend time at the beginning of your game building residential areas and work on drawing people into the city to live.

As with all unique buildings, the festival ground needs to be built next to a road and preferably away from too much residential construction, as residents may be affected by noise pollution.

You will find the festival ground build option in the first tab of the unique building menu.

How to Hold a Festival in Cities: Skylines - Concerts

Luckily, the festivals/concerts run automatically. There are three bands on the concert list, and all the game does is cycle through them. Even though it would be nice to constantly hold heavy metal concerts, for example, you have to think about the rest of the citizens of your city!

If you click on your festival ground, it will bring up a new menu. In this menu, you will be able to see the dates of future concerts, past concerts, how well they were received by your citizens, ticket prices, different kinds of budgeting sliders, and upgrade options for your festival ground.

Getting Your Concert to be a Success in Cities: Skylines - Concerts

There are a lot of different factors that you need to get take into consideration for your concerts to be a success. First of all, you need to make sure that your citizens can get to the venue. To do this, you need to make sure you have sufficient public transport in place. You could have a bus route that stops outside, a train station nearby, the venue could even be served by a metro line.

You need to make sure you keep an eye on an artists popularity. All the artists start at 50 popularity but, depending on the success of a concert, this can increase or decrease. Obviously, if an artist's popularity increases, you don't have to worry about people attending. But if it goes down, you need to figure out a way of getting people in. One way of doing this is to lower the ticket prices. Lower ticket prices will draw more to a concert and hopefully work on increasing how popular the artist is.

How to Upgrade Your Festival Area in Cities: Skylines - Concerts

While there aren't is any other new buildings in the DLC apart from the festival area, you can still change its appearance, how many buildings are in the area, and its maximum capacity by upgrading the plot. These aren't unlocked by getting to a certain level, but they do have certain criteria you need to fulfill.

2-Star Upgrade

The criteria you need to fulfill to upgrade your festival to a 2-star venue are:

• Held 6 concerts at the venue
• At least one band with a popularity of 70
• $90,000 to cover upgrade costs

3-Star Upgrade

The criteria you need to fulfill to upgrade your festival area to its maximum are:

• Held 18 concerts at the venue
• At least one band with a popularity of 85
• Had at least one sold out concert
• $120,000 to cover upgrade costs

The Cities: Skylines -  Concerts DLC is available now through Steam and requires no other expansion aside from the original game.

If you like this guide then you need to check out the rest of our Cities: Skylines guides for more tips and tricks that will make your city the best it can be!

As well as building the best city you can, there is a strong emphasis in Cities: Skylines on generating green energy. You can build an offshore wind farm using Advanced Wind Turbines, work your way up to being able to build a Solar Power Plant, or, if you have a map that heavily features rivers, you can opt for a Hydro Power Plant.

But what happens when you find your Hydro Plant not working or operating? Well, read on for some general tips to prevent this from happening and what to do when -- or if -- it does.

Where Do You Need to Build Your Hydro Power Plant? 

To build a Hydro Power Plant (or Dam), you need to have reached a population of 12,000 in your city and have access to flowing water. There are a number of maps that have rivers as standard pieces of the environment, or you can make your own using Cities: Skylines' terraforming functions.

One of the first things you need to be looking for when placing your Hydro Dam is the level of the land on either side of your river. Ideally, you should be placing it where there are cliffs or high embankments. If you place it near low-lying land, you risk flooding the surrounding area.

Next, you have to take into consideration the flow of the water you wish to build across. A stretch of water with bigger arrows denotes a fast flow. For smaller stretches of water, big arrows are key to water flow, but if you wish to build across a very wide bit of water, flow strength isn't entirely crucial. Here, the sheer volume of water flowing through your Hydro Plant will compensate for the water's slower flow.

Water flows at different strengths in Cities: Skylines. 

I Think I Have Found a Good Place, But Now My Dam Isn't Operating

The big thing to remember when building a Hydro Plant is that the effect is not immediate. Reports from Reddit and Youtube suggest that it can take as much as 5 mins of IRL time for the Hydro Dam's mechanics to kick in and the plant to start generating electricity.

During this waiting time, lots of things can happen. Every time I placed a dam in one of my simulations, it triggered a tidal wave. This is one of the reasons for building your dam in a rocky area. If I hadn't already protected part of my city with flood barriers, I would have had residents under water. Luckily, water does disperse, so it wouldn't have been forever.

Placement is absolutely key, so what could also be happening when your Hydro Plant doesn't work is that the dam has been placed near the mouth of a lake. Even though the graphics might show that there is a strong current coming out of the lake, at the end of the day, a lake does not have a constant supply of water. This might mean that the water flowing through the dam might just stop.

The Reddit image below shows what happens when a dam appears to not be working. While it may look like you need to change things around a bit, start with waiting a while to see if everything kicks in before destroying the dam and potentially causing some catastrophic event for your city.

Image posted on Reddit by user Linkery

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I'm hoping that this has given you some hints as to how to place your Hydro Plant dam and how to avoid any issues that may occur with your Hyrdo Plant not working. Make sure you check back to GameSkinny for more tips and tricks for Cities: Skylines.

Make sure to check out our other Cities: Skylines guides and fixes below: 

• Got Dead Bodies Piling Up In Cities: Skylines? Here's the Fix! 
• Cities: Skylines Mods Not Showing Up? Here's How to Fix It! 
• Cities: Skylines Mass Transit DLC Transport System Guide
• Cities: Skylines Mass Transit Traffic Guide