Cities Skylines: Natural Disasters - gamescom Preview

Continuing my time with Paradox Interactive I was welcomed by the lovely developers of Cities: Skylines, Colossal Order; they had a presentation setup to show off something very special and destructive coming to their excellent Cities: Skylines. It was a brand new expansion revolving around disasters and it was appropriately titled: Natural Disasters.

At the start of the presentation we were shown a city flourishing, the person in control was happily building, creating new zones for homes and businesses that was till disaster struck! A giant meteorite struck the city causing catastrophic havoc below. Demolishing buildings, causing fires and all out panic. A natural disaster occurred and this was only the beginning.

From there the developers talked about how the idea of disasters came about. They felt that while the you can create a huge metropolis with massive variety where most of your drama comes from is maintaining traffic, keeping people happy and making sure the garbage doesn’t build up or sewers leak. By the end you and your city were safe, but with the introduction of disasters danger can occur at any moment, which adds a new twist to city building. That’s if you decide to have the additional challenge.

As it stands when asked about what disasters our beloved cities will endure Colossal Order, unfortunately, couldn’t reveal all and only had the meteorite to show, but they were quick to explain that as development progresses they have promised they will be many more on offer, all natural of course, so don’t expect to see Aliens attacking or Godzilla. What they did show is a number of new countermeasures that help your city protect from the impending doom, or if doomsday does strike special response units that can stop further destruction.

With the introduction of response units and helicopters you can manage the disasters by carrying out evacuations A new early warning system will spread news alerts and Chirper, the loved and hated little twitter knock-off mascot, to not only signify the end of the world, but also warn you of such impending doom so you can prepare.

As we talked more about the disasters they also showed us a detailed look at the new scenarios system. This is a new feature being introduced to the game that allows you create your very own challenges and scenarios and share them with the community. This will be part of a free update that’s included with the expansion, so you won’t have to purchase the expansion to get the scenarios.

Scenarios introduce a new number of challenges. Instead of starting from scratch creating your city and flourishing, you can play a scenario where disasters will rise, the people must be happy and you can’t go broke.

When planning out your scenario you’ll be able to set the scene, build a town, place disaster points - we were shown was the ability to set the areas of where the meteorites will hit and how big of an impact they make. You can choose the rules, they can either or both win and lose objectives, or place a timed goal. There will be a large number of options to choose from and with support from the community and workshop; players will be able to share their scenarios to find the best among the rest.

I was impressed on how robust the scenario system was and I couldn’t wait to try and create something mischievous to challenge myself with. The natural disasters expansion is looking to be another hit with the fans, and Colossal Order will hopefully reveal more disasters closer to the expansion's release this winter, but for now enjoy the reveal trailer below.