Cities Skylines After Dark Review

“If Cities Skylines felt like the full city builder experience when it was released, After Dark simply makes it fuller still.”

Cities Skylines is probably my favourite city builder ever. It brings together the best elements of classic and more up to date features of the genre and offers a fruitful, engaging and exciting experience which keeps you occupied for hours at a time. When I reviewed the game I said very much the same thing, and clearly my opinion of the title as a whole has not changed. Now, the first official DLC package for the game, After Dark, has been released, and promises to expand the game through some major additional features.

Topping the bullet points for this expansion to Cities Skylines are a day/night cycle, night time activities and specific night time policies which will affect the way that your city is run. In the background to this, the DLC package also adds separate day and night sliders for budgeting, some new buildings for your city dedicated to nightlife and night time activities, and perhaps most significantly a noticeable difference in the type and level of activity in your city at night. This means that less traffic is on the roads, crime is higher risk, less people are on the streets and the things you must consider about how your city is run are different to those of the daytime.

If we look at expanding the already expansive gameplay that the core title provides, After Dark does a great job of making a visible and significant difference to gameplay without choking the original title and making it obsolete. The game changes vastly, but it does not feel intrusive as is often the case in other titles. Rather than confusing you by throwing 100 additional options in to menus and 1000 new structures to get your head around, the DLC slides seamlessly into the main game and feels like a natural extension of its being. It does not create a learning curve which puts you off the game, and it keeps the basis as is in order to allow you to keep playing as you were before, but do more too whilst you do it. To cut a long story short, it works exactly as an expansion should.

In terms of whether After Dark is worth the money or is indeed a good DLC pack, the answer is a simple yes. It feels like and expansion to this game is overdue, but After Dark is certainly a good starting point for enriching the game and bodes well for any future expansions as well. It adds some interesting gameplay elements to the game which offer long-term players some exciting new mechanics to play with and factor into their cities, and it certainly increases the realism factor of the game. If Cities Skylines felt like the full city builder experience when it was released, After Dark simply makes it fuller still. That is why it is worth the money in your pocket.

Are there any negatives to the DLC? Well, whilst it is noticeable in its content and the impact it has on the main game, I can’t help feeling it could have done more. Adding night time as a feature of the game is a big move, and while efforts have been made to make this a unique feature it feels as though there is still room for even more control to be handed over to the player to use this. For example, the option to turn off streetlights at X o’clock to save energy or to close off certain roads at night would have been simple but effective variances to gameplay to have in there. It is fair to say that it would be impossible to put in every feature that every player might want here, and the Steam Workshop offers this ability anyway, but a few more little features might have made a big difference. The game is also still lacking in trade as a feature, which personally I had hoped would be the first major DLC to come out for it. Perhaps this is in the works, but I cannot help but feel a little disappointed that the feature is still amiss.

Cities Skylines: After Dark is a solid DLC package which is worth the money being asked for it. It changes the game significantly but naturally and manages to add fame changing features without overhauling and overwhelming the original title and premise. There is perhaps some room where a little more could have been squeezed into the package however, and some gamers might feel that the features which are present are not perhaps the ones that they wanted the most. In any case, those who go for the expansion will not be disappointed in their purchase, and will enjoy their game all the more for having it.

The Good:

• New day/night cycle changes the dynamics of your city at different times of day, allowing different types of activity and events to play out.
• The new separate budget levels for day and night can help balance the tricky budget which can often be the make or break of a game.
• Additional features, including finer control over city activities, enriches the already present content without overhauling it.
• There is no real learning curve to figure out the expanded content, which fits very naturally into the main game.
• Good value for money considering the number of enhancements gained.

The Bad:

• It feels as though there was room to do more with the DLC.
• Perhaps not the first content expansion that fans might have wanted to see for the game.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.