One of the best City Building Sims for PCs now available in the Windows Store

With 500 million Windows 10 devices in use the Windows Store has the potential for being one of the biggest gaming retail platforms for PCs, but first, it needs a catalogue of good games.

Thankfully that situation is slowly improving, with some amazing titles coming to the Store recently.

The latest to arrive, for micro-managing world builders, is Cities: Skylines, an amazing city-creation experience along the lines of Sim City.

Cities: Skylines is a successor to the original developer’s Cities in Motion games which revolve around transportation systems. Think of them as Industry Giant but they focus on everything related to vehicles. The story gets interesting from there though. The developers felt they had the technical prowess to make a full city simulation game but their publisher, Paradox Interactive, held off on the idea because of SimCity. SimCity 2013 was coming out around that time and the publisher felt it would crush a game like Cities: Skylines. Luckily for them, the reboot of SimCity was a critical failure and generated a lot of resentment towards the franchise due to its always-online requirements and other poor systems.

Taking advantage of EA’s misstep, Paradox Interactive signed off on the project and in 2015 it was welcomed to open arms. People thought this was a return to form for city-building games after the SimCity debacle.

The title garnered tremendous critical acclaim on PC when it released a few years ago and since then has received many updates to make it into an even better game. Cities: Skylines came to the Xbox One in March this year and scored a 9/10 in our review.

Now the title has made the jump to the Windows Store for PCs where it is on sale for $39.99.

It features:

• Build the city of your dreams: Plan road networks, bus lines and parks. Bring on a smog-filled industrial revolution or create a quiet beach town ideal for tourists powered by renewable energy. Bring education, healthcare and safety to your citizens. Build it your way!
• Multi-tiered and challenging simulation: Playing as the mayor of your city, you’ll be faced with balancing essential requirements such as education, water electricity, police, firefighting, healthcare and much more, along with your city’s economy. Citizens within your city react fluidly, keeping you on your toes with ever-evolving demands.
• Extensive local traffic simulation: Managing traffic and the needs of your citizens to work and play will require the use of several interactive transport systems – use careful road planning alongside buses, trains, subways, and much more.
• Districts and policies: Be more than just another city hall official! Create a car-free downtown area, assign free public transport to your waterfront, or ban pets in suburbia. Designate parts of your city as a district in order to set policy at the local level, and give different parts of town their own personalities.
• After Dark included: Watch your city become an entirely different place at night: a day-night cycle will have your citizens seeking out places to unwind after work. Add in new policies and zones to create popular hotspots and provide enough taxis and trains to get to and from the clubs!

See screenshots of the game below:

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See the release trailer below:

Read our full review of the Xbox One version here and find the game in the Windows Store here.