The Cities: Skylines game has always been environmentally promoted, but they’ve taken it to a whole new level with their newest expansion pack. Green Cities takes the ordinary Skylines game and makes it all about cleaning up polluted cities. Like you’ve come to expect from the Skylines expansion packs, the expansion doesn’t offer massive amounts of new content. What it does offer is new buildings you can create, new policies you can put into place to better manage your cities, and so much more. It even comes with a free update that includes things like electric cars and more options for parks and buildings.
If you haven’t played any Cities: Skylines games before, here’s a little update. This game is similar to the SimCity game, but much better and more interesting. For starters, the buildings you can build that are super eco-friendly and state of the art all actually exist in the real world. Beyond that, the graphics are way better and the overall gameplay is more enjoyable. It’ll even make you want to learn more about how you can be more environmentally friendly and green in your everyday life. But, let’s stop comparing and get to the good stuff.
This game not only increases environmental awareness, but it’ll make you want to research the new and crazy things you were able to build that are actually available in the real world. When you start building your city, you’ll notice that, even the ones with the most eco-friendly plans in motion, start off with pollutants. For your city to survive and thrive, it needs to have some level of industry, factories, and will have to do something with the sewage. Before you can unlock the better and eco-friendlier policies, you have to deal with a little pollution and the fish have to take one for the team with sewage disposal.
Once you’ve unlocked them, a good first place to start on your path to an environmentally pleasant and successful city is to construct a recycling plant. They’re good for tax revenue as they recycle the waste and make new products for local business. By increasing profits and keeping things local, you’re doing a whole lot of good for your city. After that, you can break the city up into districts and implement specific policies to encourage a thriving community and as eco-friendly a lifestyle as possible. This game offers a more holistic approach to environmental concerns; you focus on more issues outside of just pollution.
As any successful expansion pack should, Green Cities offers the ability to resolve some of the problems the original game touched on, but didn’t allow you to solve. It also offers an educational benefit by utilizing all real technology. All the eco-friendly buildings you can construct, companies you can create, and policies you can put into place are things in the real world, prompting players to research them and what other potential eco-friendly technologies are out there that they have yet to discover.
You’ll also gain a better understanding of what it takes to fix environmental issues. When it takes you a year or two in the game to see any effects from environmental cleanups, it becomes real when you realise just how hard it is to implement the solutions to these problems. That’ll definitely make you think twice before you do something harmful to the environment. This game definitely has the potential to make a new generation of environmentalists.
This game offers an excellent expansion to the original game, allowing you to have more customizable options to build the best city you can. It’ll spark a passion for environmental studies in you that you never thought possible, just by creating a genuine curiosity for the real-life versions of the amazing technology available and the incredible strides science has made in terms of environmental safety. As an added bonus, the game encourages education while not being overly preachy about it. It doesn’t feel like you’re playing an educational game; it feels kind of like you’re playing Sims. But, before you know it, you’ll find yourself researching all the crazy things you saw in the game and learning how to be more environmentally friendly.
