Hacker News Reader

Comment by khalilravanna | Hacker News Reader

Funny from the title I thought this was going to talk about how Cities Skylines lacks the soul of Maxis’ SimCity games. Skylines always felt sterile and dead. Just a piece of software. SimCity felt like a toybox buzzing with life and charm from buttons in the UI to the people milling about to the jazz soundtrack. There was vision and creative intent beyond just programming some systems. Hell, as much as everyone threw a tantrum over SimCity 2013 I think it still has infinitely more charm than Skylines.

Don’t even get me started on the gameplay loop that just feels like a simulation more than a game that’s been tightly balanced to be challenging. More of a sandbox with no real challenge to grow infinitely.

Different strokes for different folks but it always made me sad seeing Skylines take off and be talked about while the possibility of a true SimCity successor seems to have been buried with Maxis back in Emeryville.

View on HN

Every time I’ve ever brought up the fact that Cities Skylines (the first one anyway, I haven’t played 2, maybe it’s different) isn’t really much of a game as much as it’s a city painting/traffic management sandbox with very little chance of ever failing, people would inevitably come and hit me with a “That sounds like an amazing time!” Or a “And that’s why it’s better than SimCity!”

For everything else that SimCity 2013 had going against it (and there was a lot), its gameplay actually had challenges to overcome with real decisions to make that had gameplay consequences as you were building out your city. Where you put your utilities mattered. If you didn’t think it through, you were putting your city in jeopardy.

In C:S, it felt like the only real consequence your decisions ever had was that you made more traffic jams to handle. And that’s not even really an obstacle because you could literally raze your entire city and rebuild it with your many millions accrued over time.

But you can’t make a huge city in SimCity (2013), so C:S won.

The vast majority of players who were still playing (and maybe still are!) SimCity 4 were more focused on the city painter aspect.

And part of that is unless the simulation can be super super accurate you’ll eventually find a way to if not, get infinite money at least make money never a problem and then you just left with the city painter

Or it’s basically a completely different type of game like Dwarf Fortress, or Factorio, or whatever that Soviet one is

Thinking the same thing. I remember in SimCity 3k that if land values were low, you would end up with shabby looking buildings like the author mentioned, adding to that "soul". Cities feels like "Logistics: the video game" sometimes, it reminds me of that every time I pick it up after a while.

I think both styles of game have their own appeal. City Skylines scratches a similar itch for me as Factorio and Oxygen Not Included does, where the fun comes from the progressive expansion and optimization of a design.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com