Cities: Skylines Heads to Your Tabletop Today

Thames & Kosmos revealed the latest Paradox Interactive PC title to be receiving the board game treatment, Cities: Skylines, has arrived in stores. The hit video game city builder hits the table top as a cooperative endeavor where the players will have to balance many aspects of urban design such as financial resources, environment, traffic flow, and more. The game is for one to four players, ages 10+, plays in around 40-70 minutes, and carries an MSRP of $49.95.

From Thames & Kosmos:

Thames & Kosmos, the company behind some of the top strategy and family-focused board games available on the market today, recently announced that the highly-anticipated Cities: Skylines board game is now available in the U.S. On the heels of its European debut at PDXCON in Berlin and SPIEL in Essen earlier this month, this physical board game version brings the city-building game off the screen and straight to tabletops, family rooms, and game cafes nationwide.

Based on the best-selling video game by Paradox Interactive, Cities: Skylines is a cooperative board game experience where players work together to plan, build, and manage a city. Players begin with a blank canvas—a plot of land on which they must develop residential, commercial, and industrial areas, gradually creating new neighborhoods. The key to a successfully developed city is a happy population; as players decide how and where to build, they must consider a variety of factors such as the environment, crime, traffic flow, education, and financial resources.

“Since its release in 2015, more than six million copies of the video game have sold worldwide and the active monthly user count remains strong today,” explains Andrew Quartin, CEO of Thames & Kosmos. “A large portion of the players who have been building the city of their dreams digitally for years also enjoy the analog nature of classic board games. This new edition caters to their inherent enthusiasm for the game and offers up some key variations that will also interest other board game fans. For one, the board game is completely cooperative: everyone has to work together to build a city as successfully as possible.”

But it is not just the built-in audience of video game fans who have been looking forward to this new tactile version. The cardboard components beautifully integrate the game’s original graphics, while celebrated board game designer Rustan Håkansson skillfully executes the shift from digital to analog, generating widespread buzz within the board game community—and beyond. Quartin adds, “With gameplay that increases in difficulty as the game progresses, Cities: Skylines is a great choice for players of all experience levels including veteran gamers, newcomers, and families—it truly is a game that everyone can enjoy.”

Cities: Skylines is now available for purchase at local toy and game stores and through online retailers such as Amazon for a suggested retail price of $49.95. Additional mass-market distribution is expected in spring 2020.

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Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media, Jeff tackles any and all sorts of games but has a special fondness for strategy, conflict sims, and roleplaying games. Plus, he's certainly never at a loss for an opinion...

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