Hi! I’m Erik Odeldahl, Creative Director at Fast Travel Games. We recently released Cities: VR on Meta Quest 2, our VR adaptation of the leading city-builder, Cities: Skylines.
While the game includes a helpful tutorial, mastering the game will indeed provide a challenge. After all, you are not only designing cities in Cities: VR. You need to consider every aspect of city planning—from construction to utilities—and provide healthcare, education and more. You will also need to keep the books in order: adjust taxes and budget, take loans, control your income and expenses.
So to get you started, here are five tips to make sure you have a great time as mayor of your own city!
1. Build Different Kinds of Roads
Connecting areas and allowing people to travel around your cities is vital. While some roads should be fully straight for optimal traffic flow, we really suggest you try the Curve or Free-Form tools to get more interesting shapes. In Cities: VR, you’re able to build roundabouts by hand! You might find that swapping Snap Turning for Free Turning also helps with this.
And don’t forget that you can build bridges and tunnels. When you have a road selected, simply hold the right grip button and raise or lower your hand!
2. Establish Thriving Neighborhoods
Residential areas need electricity, which can be added by building Wind Turbines, Coal Power Plants, and more. Fresh water and sewage infrastructure are also needed for your city to prosper, so make sure to build some Water Towers or Pumping Stations.
In short, start getting the basics right and you will soon see the population start to grow, allowing you to bring your designing and planning to the next step.
3. Make Workers Happy
There are many different services in the game that you need to manage, including emergency services and infrastructure. You need workers to sustain a level of quality within these services, and setting up public transport is a great way to satisfy a worker shortage in commercial and industrial areas, for example.
Also, make sure to experiment with the city budget. Increasing the base levels for some services could grant things like additional vehicles for said service—one of the best ways to increase efficiency!
4. Set Taxes Correctly
Handling the economy is important in Cities: VR. As mayor, you will need to keep the books in order by taking loans, controlling your income and expenses…and of course, adjusting taxes. Getting the tax amount to the perfect level is not an easy task, but here’s a tip: Experiment with different levels and monitor the outcome—you might find a perfect balance between getting a sustainable amount of income from your citizens without them getting mad at their mayor!
5. Keep Noise Away From People
Hospitals and emergency services are obviously important for the health of your citizens, but even when you get them perfectly set up, you might still find people having a bad time all over your city.
Chances are this is due to noise pollution, which can really be a non-silent killer if not taken care of correctly. Planning your city without noise pollution in mind can potentially lead to hospitals running out of room, which might lead to a…less-than-optimal situation for you to handle.
So here’s a tip: Office buildings are quiet and are not affected by noise pollution, so build them between industrial zones and residential zones.
These are just a few of the many tips we could give. We hope they’ll be helpful to you as you start building your shiny, new metropolis.
Cities: VR will be supported with free content updates, new features and improvements so make sure to stay tuned on @citiesvr on social media. And go check out Cities: VR on Meta Quest 2 today.
Good luck, mayor!
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