Cities: Skylines…After Dark
Written by: Adam "ManKorn" Korenman, CC2K Video Games Editor
After Dark looks to address, among a myriad of other items, the player request for a day/night cycle. Was this expansion planned from the beginning, or have your altered it to address the fans’ reaction to the original game?
We actually had some other ideas for the first expansion and had no plans to add the day and night cycle to the game. After a while and multiple requests from the community we decided to prototype it anyway and were really happy with it! Luckily the good people at Paradox agreed and we got the greenlight for nighttime expansion.
Can you disclose the current sales figures for Cities: Skylines?
Unfortunately no. You’ll have to ask Paradox. But over a million copies sold and still going strong so it’s not too shabby.
What is the most impressive mod you have seen from the gaming community? Has that had any effect on your development for After Dark?
One of the technically very impressive mods is the First Person Multiplayer, which I didn’t know they could pull off to be honest. It keeps amazing us how creative and talented these modders are. They really inspire us to do better! For After Dark we tried to find things that it wouldn’t be so easy for the modders to do so, like adding the specializations to leisure and tourism. I like how both the modders and us developers keep improving the game together.
With After Dark, you’re offering a lot of free content in addition to the purchasable expansion. The fans are certainly appreciative. What led to the decision to give so much away?
This is the model Paradox has used for CKII and EUIV and found it working really well. We keep improving the game for all the players and hope that they find something they like in the paid expansions too.
As we discussed in our first interview, you are all fans of Maxis and the SimCity series. Going into this expansion, what lessons did you take from both your game and the recent SimCity? (if any)
We had a lot of features we wanted to have in Cities: Skylines like bikes and bus lanes and then of course the biggest one being the day and night cycle. It really was a natural progression from the base game to the expansion and of course quite a lot of small improvements and bugfixing. We tried to squeeze in as much of that as possible and still continue to do so. The biggest lesson for us was to always aim for more polish. That’s what we want to have. Beautiful, polished and fun city builder!
Are there still items left on the cutting room floor? Are there more expansions to expect down the road?
So many! Let’s see what happens in the future, but we at Colossal are committed to bringing more features to Cities: Skylines. And not only our own ideas but we get tons of feedback from the fans and try to cater to those wishes as well.