Natural Disasters features a catalog of catastrophes to challenge mayor-players everywhere, including planning with early warning systems and emergency routes, devastating and destructive disaster effects, and caring for the populace as they struggle to rebuild. The expansion will also update Cities: Skylines with a new scenario editor and gameplay mode, allowing players to finally win – or lose – the game on their own terms.
This is one of my favourite content packs for Cities: Skylines just because of the new challenge it offers. It’s also really cool to completely blow your city to bits.
The new game mechanics regarding disaster alert, protection, and the rescue of survivors, arguably make Natural Disasters stand out as the deepest implementation of disasters we have ever seen in a city building game.
If you enjoy Cities: Skylines, you should definitely put aside some money for this expansion. Your first instincts will provide plenty of amusement, but when you go back to playing the game as usual, the true value of Natural Disasters becomes apparent. Far from being a tangential add-on, it adds more to the game than you would dare to assume. Though slightly marred by visual inconsistencies and conditional performance wobbles, Natural Disasters is a thoroughly essential addition to the Cities: Skylines experience.
If you’re a big fan of Cities: Skylines, this expansion is one you should at least have on your radar. It increases the difficulty, introduces some pretty long, unique scenarios, and lets you feel like a malevolent god with the ability to just drop a meteor right on the city center, if you wanted to.
Natural disasters (both random and on-demand) were very skillfully integrated with the existing gameplay. [02/2017, p.49]
The biggest down side - if you can call it that - to Natural Disasters is just how obvious it all is. Helicopters and shelters, weather stations for early warning, loss of life, rebuilding efforts, and so on. The whole idea of demolishing huge areas of your city with various crises. It's all been done before, and while it most certainly belongs in a game like Cities Skylines, I wasn't really surprised with the novelty of any of it. Does that mean it isn't fun? Heck no!
Without the Steam Workshop Natural Disasters is a nice little DLC that adds more depth to an already fun and interesting game. Giving long time players a little more spice. With the Steam Workshop and the scenario creator players will have an almost unlimited number of cities to play and scenarios to beat as players create new and interesting challenges for each other. It brings with it complexity and a difficulty level. The ability to fail at your job and the end of a game that has previously had no end. If at first you find that Natural Disasters isn’t for you, give it some time and try out the player made content. It’s the end of the world as we know it…and I feel fine.
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March 13, 2017
Cities Skylines has sold more than 3.5M copies worldwide and it will celebrate it with a free DLC! Read more
May 31, 2018
Cities: Skylines partners with Teacher Gaming to publish an education edition of the game. Read more
December 6, 2017
Cities: Skylines launches a new DLC dedicated to Jazz. Watch video
August 18, 2017
Cities: Skylines unveils its new expansion: Concerts. Watch video