Cities: Skylines expands into education later this month
A place of learning, and football
It’s time to pack your Cities: Skylines inhabitants off to uni, where they will surely get up to nothing but sombre study. There will be no mischief, though there may be some handegg, which is essentially the same thing. The update will include five sports, in fact, along with other faculties, new policies, and new maps. You can get a glimpse of some of it in the trailer below.
I really like the part of this trailer that starts at 12 seconds in, which is I guess supposed to be demonstrating someone’s vocabulary expanding through the magic of education but which I read at first as a writer poking fun at themselves for trying to come up with a pun. These few seconds really encapsulate the feeling of about 45% of my working day.
There’s actually not one but three ways to school your populace coming: Trade School, Liberal Arts College, and University. You can also get into the nitty-gritty of sports team management, including, crucially, customisable jerseys. And apparently both coaches and cheerleaders contribute to your team’s chances of victory. I suppose both training and good old fashioned morale boosts are effective ways of getting better.
Also important for proper study is the proper music. There’ll be two new radios to choose from, costing $4 each. Deep Focus Radio is an ambient mix, all the rage these days with teens trying to chill out and knuckle down. And Campus Rock Radio is the other approach, hyping you up instead.
You’ll be able to support your burgeoning educated class with policies like book fairs and research grants, and once the students are all done you can throw them a lovely graduation ceremony so that they can finally do that thing where everyone throws their hats in the air. (They never did this at my university. We didn’t have the hats at all except that you could pay to have a photograph taken in one of the hats for some reason. I feel like I never really graduated at all.)
Cities: Skylines – Campus will open its doors on May 21st and cost $12.99. You can buy the base game on Steam for £22.99/$29.99/€27.99, or on Humble where it's currently 75% off until Thursday May 16th.