'Skylines,' Your Favorite 'SimCity' Replacement, Just Got a Flight Simulator

The city-building game Cities: Skylines is less than a month old, but already players are hacking fun additions on top of it. Now, a Steam user named Ulysius has outfitted the game with a flight simulator mode that lets creators soar over their own metropoli.

Flight Cimulator looks rough in its alpha, but the mod seems promising. Cities: Skylines has wasted no time in gathering an enthusiastic fanbase.

This same user has been busy, uploading several other mods, including enhanced sun effects and an isometric camera view so that Skylines looks more like a COUGH COUGH certain other famous game series from which these fans may have migrated from.

March has felt a little bit thematic for city building games. The maker of SimCity, Maxis, saw its original studio shuttered by EA, a legacy that ends as tarnished as their last release was marred by​ overreaching online functions coupled with demands that players maintain a connection to their server. Many users would have just liked a more basic city builder, or at least a game that wouldn't crash.

Soon after that news, a new game seemed to rise up from its ashes. Cities: Skylines, sleek in appearance and cut-the-bullshit for content was exactly the comfort blanket needed by those hurt over Maxis' closure. But what at first seemed like a substitute is quickly becoming an heir apparent.

Ulysius' flight mod is hardly the only interesting or ambitious take to come in recent weeks. There's a Borderlan​ds mod to give your city a visually cartoon colour coat reminiscent of the popular first-person shooter. There are some Gotham additions to give your city all the Wayne Enterprises sights, minus murder clowns, chemical terrorist scarecrows and Crazy Quilt. A former Maxis artist said what we were all thinking and decided the game could d​o with an In-N-Out Burger.

Many m​ods seem to be made just to fix small problems within the game. The Cities: Skylines community is working to pick up the slack of user interface issues or traffic specs. Why would players do this? Same reason modders pile on to Skyrim or Left 4 Dead. They've found a game that can give them what they want, and they see ways to make that experience better. Or an experie​nce they can poop all over. Planes, cult burger chains, poop. They see a lot of things.