Ooh! Cities: Skylines has a second expansion pack.
Snowfall. Released on February 18, 2016
for Colossal Order's highly enjoyable city builder Cities: Skylines.
I like this game a lot.
And at just $12.99, this one is even less costly than the previous pack
which is a welcome sight indeed.
So, what do you get?
Well, first up is a dynamic weather system
which provides rainstorms and atmospheric effects
These look pretty awesome, if you ask me.
There's just something about rain that transforms a cityscape into something that feels more alive.
Unfortunately, there's no actual rain sound effects that I can hear,
which means that the ambience isn't as nice and eerie as it could be.
But this rain and fog is actually a free addition to the game through the latest patch,
so if you don't care about snow, then here you go.
Another free addition to the game is the Theme Editor.
This is a tool that lets you easily create custom themes for your maps,
from realistic depictions of Earth
to otherworldly depictions of... other worlds.
But that's the free stuff. Let's move onto the paid stuff in Snowfall
like the new Tram system.
Trams are another mass transit alternative, falling somewhere between buses and trains,
and can placed on their own tracks or placed onto roads to run alongside traffic.
I found that trams are incredibly easy to screw up with certain intersections, though,
because they have to stop for traffic like everything else,
so you just have to be careful where you place them.
Speaking of roads, you'll now have to dedicate resources to maintaining them
with the new Road Maintenance Service.
This happens by use of a ploppable building that's tied to the appropriate slider in the budget panel
and helps improve the quality of your road network,
leading to magically faster traffic flow.
Another new ploppable building is the sauna
which acts as an additional health service building.
Because what's healthier than stripping down with a bunch of strangers and sweating your nuts off?
There are also some new landmark buildings to place wherever you want,
which honestly isn't that exciting, seeing as you can just download
friggin' anything you want for free on the Steam Workshop,
but it's nice that they're here.
And now for the main event--
Snow.
The temperature drops rapidly,
the powder promptly piles up,
and everyone in your city slows down a bit while trying to stay warm.
And the longer Jack Frost splooges his white stuff all over your city streets,
the more snow plows you'll need,
which are dispatched via the new Snow Dump buildings.
But clearing roads aren't your only problem
because your citizens can now freeze to death
if you don't take care to see that they're heated.
Water pipes can be upgraded to carry both water AND heat now,
and as long as they're connected to one of the new heating plants or boiler stations,
they'll stay good and toasty through the night.
Heating also puts an additional strain on the power grid, especially at night,
which finally gives you a reason to manage the overnight power budget introduced in After Dark.
Three heat related services can be applied to your districts
or your city as a whole to offset some of this,
as well as two new city planning ordinances
that distribute studded tires and spiky shoes to your citizens.
There are several new parks that show up during the snow, too,
like ice skating, snowmobiling,
skiing, curling and hockey.
With the addition of a few choice custom buildings,
Snowfall is probably the best Canada simulator on the market today.
Overall, snow and temperature is a fantastic addition to the game
when it comes to changing up the look of your cities
and forcing you to change your tried and true urban planning strategies.
However,
when it comes to actually changing a significant portion of the Skylines experience as a whole,
Snowfall falls flat.
In the snow.
Where it's fallen.
Flat.
Uh, that's because snow only shows up in these
three snow-themed maps and nowhere else!
Your existing cities don't have to worry about snow,
and the dedicated snowing maps are stuck in an eternal winter
instead of eternal summer.
Despite the precipitation and fog coming and going in dynamic fashion,
cycling seasons are non-existent,
so you better *really* like wintertime to get this pack.
Now, there's already a mod called "Environment Changer" that addresses this somewhat.
It lets you convert your city's map from winter to summer
before loading it from the main menu.
This *is* better than nothing, but it's no replacement for actual seasons.
One more gripe of mine is that the bodies of water are not affected by the temperature.
This means that you're not gonna be getting any frozen lakes or icy rivers,
so water-based transport keeps on going like nothing's happened.
Ugh. Snowfall's treatment of winter is a huge disappointment to me, man.
I love snow in games
and I've never played a city builder where I have to worry about heating buildings,
people sleeping on the sidewalks and utilizing snow plows.
It's a very engaging set of new rules you have to deal with on these snow maps,
but that's the thing.
Unless you've got the static "snow mode" activated,
there's not much new to play with in this pack.
That begs the question,
Is Snowfall worth buying or not?
As I mentioned earlier,
it costs $12.99, or your regional equivalent,
and really that's "snow problem." Ha ha...
It's just that the gameplay on offer is so arbitrarily limited to a few maps,
and even modding the game only lets you switch things up from the main menu at this point.
And even then, each time you switch seasons,
it breaks your city due to missing winter buildings,
and a budget that's no longer balanced correctly.
For a game with such an "anything goes at any time" sandbox philosophy,
having its gameplay split up between map types
just seems like a step backwards in that regard.
So in short, no,
Snowfall is not a necessary purchase in my eyes.
That's not to say it's a bad purchase either
because, let's be honest, it's pretty cheap for an expansion pack
and I had lots of fun messing with the winter mode.
Eternal winter is a fun diversion
with a fresh challenge introducing a satisfying change of pace.
But personally, I'd rather have an augmentation of the entire core simulation
rather than just an outright replacement for part of it.
And if you enjoyed this video on Skylines: Snowfall--
Man, that sounds like a James Bond movie, doesn't it?
Anyway...
Then you might like some of my other videos. I've covered After Dark,
the main Skylines games and SimCity stuff and a bunch of other... whatever.
So, uh, subscribe if you'd like to do that or just look on my channel.
And as always, thank you very much for watching.