I thought simulation games, like Sim City, were easy.

My experience today with Cities: Skylines made sure it was absolutely clear that they are not at all easy – at least not for beginners who have no idea what they’re doing.

I decided to try out Cities: Skylines because I’ve literally never played any simulation games before, and I wanted to try it out. I expected my experience to be very relaxed and easy – just build some roads, con­struct some buildings, and watch my city grow.

…

I had to completely destroy and restart my city three times before finally managing to figure out how not to immediately go bankrupt.

Cities: Skylines really puts your city management skills to the test. It starts you off easy, only having you manage a few utilities, but as your city grows, you need to keep track of everything that you would need to survive in real life.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stream my first experience with Cities: Skylines because my streaming software appeared to have some conflicts capturing the game. (When I did a window capture instead, I lagged so much that I think I had about 6 FPS. I already have pretty low FPS when playing Cities: Skylines without streaming, on minimum graphics settings.)

Steam says I have about four hours of game time on Cities: Skylines so far, and in those four hours, I built five cities (three of which no longer exist due to bankruptcy).

The first city I built that managed to stay alive reached almost 2.5k population.

The second city I built was with the infinite money mod, and served the purpose of easing my curiosity as to what the mid-game was.

I stopped playing when I realized I was getting overwhelmed and needed to take a break.

I feel like Cities: Skylines is a much more stimulating game than I originally thought it was, but I think I need to read up on it and do a lot of research on the intricate workings of the city before being able to fully enjoy the entire simulation experience.

This game received quite a bit of hype when it first came out because a lot of people said it was the better version of Sim City that everyone wanted.

I haven’t been completely captivated by the game yet, but I do feel like my first experience with it was positive, and I did have some fun. Although it won’t be a game that I will play on a regular basis, it’s definitely something I’ll boot up once in a while when I have some spare time.